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A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.