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A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.