A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
