An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron 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 for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
