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An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.