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An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.