To Cook a Bear Review: This Daft Historical Crime Drama Is Like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit

An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.

An Odd Beast

This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are bent on 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 otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.