An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
