A intense debate recently went viral on social media, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
