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An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come 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 especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.