A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none 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 newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
