An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered 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 new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior 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 bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like 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.
