A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
