The Bear Cooking Drama Analysis: A Daft Period Mystery Resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit

A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – 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 with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory 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 bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.

Tonal Inconsistencies

Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.