A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. 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 had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
