A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
