A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising 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 (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns 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 Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps 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 show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
