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An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which 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 consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). 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 conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.