An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
