A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
