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

An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, 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 where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.

An Odd Beast

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.