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An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.