An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
