To Cook a Bear Review: A Daft Period Mystery Resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit

A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent 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 rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series streams on Disney+ now.