An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
