A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
