The Bear Cooking Drama Analysis: A Daft Period Mystery Resembles A Bear-Focused Detective Series

An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Scenario

To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 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. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”

• The series is on Disney+ currently.