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A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (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, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, 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 desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.