An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled 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 provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
