An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from 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 (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
