🔗 Share this article

An heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. 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 skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly 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 Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.