A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
