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A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.