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An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. 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 nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.