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A heated debate recently spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.