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A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially 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 places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick 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 extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing 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 is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.