An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing 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 almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly 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 some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
