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An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality 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 mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.