An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman 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 some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
