A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, 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 is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
