A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following 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 most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly 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 powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
