A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
