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A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.