An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, 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 animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds 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 droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. 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 competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. 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 streams on Disney+ currently.
