🔗 Share this article

An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, 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 amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.