An intense debate recently went viral on social media, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
