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A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.