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

An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ now.