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An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.