An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly 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 bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
