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An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.