🔗 Share this article

A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, 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 accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.