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A heated debate recently went viral on social media, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.