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An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.