To Cook a Bear Review: A Daft Period Mystery Resembles A Bear-Focused Detective Series

A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again 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 the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.