An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
