To Cook a Bear Review: A Daft Historical Crime Drama Resembles A Bear-Focused Detective Series

An heated debate recently went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

Once the foundations of tension planted, 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. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.