An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
