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An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of conflict planted, 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 bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.