An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails 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
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
