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A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace 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 creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.