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A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.