🔗 Share this article

A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.