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An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof 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 a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.