An heated debate lately went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare 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 sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
