An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
