A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever 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 follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
