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An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, 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 peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.