An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
