A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
