A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time 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 completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
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 flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
