A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
