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A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. 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 series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise 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 seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility 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 the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles 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.