A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
