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A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi 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 distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.