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An intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.