A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. 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 bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots 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 definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
