A heated debate lately went viral on social media, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma 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 females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, 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 bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
