A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
