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An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility 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 Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.