An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing 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 decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
