A heated debate lately went viral on social media, following a user asked the question 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 revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
