A heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
