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A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.