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A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

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), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. 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 terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.