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A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny 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 particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.