An heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
