An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce 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 inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), 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 was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view 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 TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
