A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
