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A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing 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 make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.