An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
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 strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
