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A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered 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 in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’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 powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither 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 pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.