An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
