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An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – 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 from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur 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 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 latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.