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An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.