A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
