A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces 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. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. 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 allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
