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A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.