An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
