An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view 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 some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
