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An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.