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An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.