A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
