🔗 Share this article

A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.