An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
