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An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.