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A intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.