A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, 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 streams on Disney+ now.
