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An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.