An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
