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A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.