A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
