🔗 Share this article

A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.