A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on 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). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
