A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
