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An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, 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

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.