An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
