An intense debate lately went viral on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
