A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
