An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances 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 in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
