A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits 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 on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance 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 competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
