An heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof 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 TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
