A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal 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 Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
