An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked 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 between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
