An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
