An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
