A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
