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An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.