An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, 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 bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
