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A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one 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 among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.