An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
