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A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man 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 cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.