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A intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering 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 sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.