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An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. 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 nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.