A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up 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 deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
