An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
