A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates 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 inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
