A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or 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 an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
