An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice 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 from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
