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An heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. 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 competing 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: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.