An heated debate lately went viral on social media, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
