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An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.