An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
