An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, 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 rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
