A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily 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 tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
