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A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user 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 worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which 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, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.