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An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.