To Cook a Bear Analysis: This Daft Period Mystery Is Like A Bear-Focused Detective Series

An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Dramatising the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.

The Antagonists

Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.

Plot Progression

Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.

Clashing Agendas

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”

• To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.