An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory 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 desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly 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 the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
