An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, 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 lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
