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A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs 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 which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.