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A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.