An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
