A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
