An intense debate lately went viral on social media, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates 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 TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
