An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing 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 regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
