A heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict 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 foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, 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 appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
