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An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.