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A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. 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 particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility 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 serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.