An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
