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A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.