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A intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.