A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
