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An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – 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 servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.