An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform 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 were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine 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 assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
