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A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.