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A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found 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 verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.