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A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. 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 allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.