A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
