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A intense debate recently went viral on social media, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post 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 dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely 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 bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.