A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows 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, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
