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An intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense 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 societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.