An heated debate recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
