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An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on 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 populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. 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 prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience 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 opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.