An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again 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 serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
