An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on 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 community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman 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 creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
