A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within 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 strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods 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 slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish 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, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste 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 local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
