An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives 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 almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’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 start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive 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, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
