An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
