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An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.