An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
