A intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling 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 peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (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 extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
