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A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.