A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, 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 revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
