A heated debate lately went viral on social media, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms 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 faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
