A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet 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 with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
