An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour 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 some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
