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A intense debate recently went viral on social media, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.