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An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.