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A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.