A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
