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An heated debate lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.