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A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.