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A heated discussion recently spread widely on social media, after someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (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.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with 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, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.