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A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated 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 within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.