An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
