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An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.