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An heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor 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 fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.