An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly 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 evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
