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A heated discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.