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An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.