An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour 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 some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
