The Bear Cooking Drama Review: This Silly Historical Crime Drama Resembles A Bear-Focused Detective Series

A heated debate lately went viral on social media, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males 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 minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.

The Antagonists

Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Opposing Goals

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear 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 fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.