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A intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn 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 planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous 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 shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.