A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
