An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell females how foolish 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 decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
