An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent 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 get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
