An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing 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 store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
