An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
