An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come 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, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
