An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness 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 (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, 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.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
