An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
