A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
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 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
