An intense debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
