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An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.