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A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour 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 adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.