An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue 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 instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
