An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
