A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
