A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility 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 serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
