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An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe 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 minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.