An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
