A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
