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An heated debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing 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 the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.