A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
