A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly 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 spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
