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An intense debate recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.