An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, 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 tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
