A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
