A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
