An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females 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. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son 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 Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
