An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
