A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
