An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. 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 science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
