A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
