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An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.