A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions 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 answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
