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A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice 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 drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.