A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
