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A intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.