A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed 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 revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
