An heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
