A heated debate lately went viral on social media, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
