A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
