An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more 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 some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
