A intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn 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
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
