A intense debate recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.