A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles 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+ currently.