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An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (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 on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.