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An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later 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 within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior 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 village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.