An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility 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, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
