An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland 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 distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
