An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, 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 somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
