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A heated debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears 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

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.