An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
