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A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.