🔗 Share this article

A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.