A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
