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A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.