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An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.