An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet 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 equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, 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, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
