An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish 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 villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
