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An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive 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 particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours 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

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. 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 allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.