A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
