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An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist 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 being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods 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 peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.