A heated debate recently went viral on social media, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, 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 bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
