A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds 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 mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor 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 a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
