An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, 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 conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view 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 some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
