A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
