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An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature 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 faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.