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An intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.