An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 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 within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which 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 powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
