An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with 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 confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view 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 a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
