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An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.