A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering 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 (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
