A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
