An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
