A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: 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 perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
