An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
