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A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which 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, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.