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A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated 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. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.