🔗 Share this article

An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.