An intense debate recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on 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.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter 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 out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
