🔗 Share this article

An heated debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.