A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
