A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
