An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, 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 some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
