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A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.