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An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, 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 in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.