An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
