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An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.