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An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.