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A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.