🔗 Share this article

An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.