A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
