A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
