🔗 Share this article

A heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen 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 benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely 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 proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.