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An intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience 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, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.