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A intense debate lately went viral on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.