A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
