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An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause 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 inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. 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 spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.