An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least 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 Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
