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A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.