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An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.