A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
