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A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.