An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
