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An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.