An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
