An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
