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An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. 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 opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.