A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more 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 the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
