An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more 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 Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
