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A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression 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 souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.