An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors 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 response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
