🔗 Share this article

An intense debate lately went viral on social media, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.