The Bear Cooking Drama Review: This Silly Period Mystery Resembles A Bear-Focused Detective Series

An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ currently.