An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide 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 Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
