An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction 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 clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
