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An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.