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A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.