A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
