A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
