A intense debate lately went viral on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
