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A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains 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 liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.