An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
