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A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.