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An intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.