A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question 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 vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets 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 from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
