An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more 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 the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. 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.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
