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An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – 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 against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.