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

A heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.