An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, 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 animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. 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 terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
