A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
