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A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.