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An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.