A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version 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 a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
