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A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.