A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
