An intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
