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An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more 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 serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.