An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
