A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
