An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
