An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing 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 the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
