An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
