To Cook a Bear Analysis: This Silly Historical Crime Drama Is Like A Bear-Focused Detective Series

A heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.