A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing 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 a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
