An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
