A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females 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 drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
