A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, 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 strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
