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A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, 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 where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.