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A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.