A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more 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 the author’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 a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
