An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward 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 bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
