An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped 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 Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
