To Cook a Bear Analysis: This Daft Period Mystery Is Like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit

A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence 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 Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.