An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures 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 inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
