A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
