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An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly 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 TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.