🔗 Share this article

A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself 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 (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.