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An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.