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An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker 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 sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. 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, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands 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 (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates 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 adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.