🔗 Share this article

An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.