A heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
