An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (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 new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing 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 shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – 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, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
