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A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick 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 newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.