A heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where 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 maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.