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An heated debate lately went viral on social media, following someone asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.