An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda 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 proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.