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An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.