A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone 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 wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
