A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
