A intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women 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 nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
