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A heated debate lately went viral on social media, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.