A heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
