An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, 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 – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – 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 coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
