🔗 Share this article

A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son 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

Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.