An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
