A intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
