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A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.