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A intense discussion recently went viral on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory 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 bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.