An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
