A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
