A heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
