An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
