A heated debate lately went viral on social media, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
