An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
