A heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
