An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
