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An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails 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 with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. 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 allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.