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A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur 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 clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.