An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
