An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
