An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
