🔗 Share this article

An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears 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 still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.