An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
