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A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.