To Cook a Bear

When the slightly rebellious priest Lars Levi Læstadius (Gustaf Skarsgård) arrives in the village of Kengis, his forgiving sermon quickly becomes a hot potato among the people of Tornedal and the small government. God is love is his message, but Christian values are quickly forgotten when the disappearance of a young girl shakes the whole village. The incompetent sheriff Brahe is convinced that it was a bear behind the deed, but the provost knows better. Together with their Sami foster son Jussi, they try to find God in a godless world that uncovers uncomfortable truths about the unequal Swedish society ...

Mikael Niemi's hard-boiled Tornedal detective story has become a lavish TV series and it is an ambitious project that leaves its mark. To Cook a Bear is something as unusual as a Norrland detective story, where reason meets oppression and myth meets monstrous reality. The northern sunrises may be romantic, but the story itself is far from a sunshine story; alongside boiled bear, misery and xenophobia are also on the menu, leaving a bittersweet flavour as the search for God's light is constantly overshadowed by hatred and prejudice.

The heart of the series is Emil Karlsen, who plays the dean's adopted son, and the father-son relationship between them is strong and emotional. You want to look away as Karlsen's sympathetic character suffers one violent injustice after another, reinforcing the character's spiritual conflict: does the Christian God exist for the poor and for the Sami? Skarsgård also does an excellent job as the well-meaning, but crooked turncoat preacher who also acts as Norrbotten's very own Sherlock Holmes (and Jussi becomes a Sami Watson). The quick shift from robed priest to pipe-smoking master detective was a little hard to swallow at first, but the characters' motivations are strong enough that once the story is set in motion, it's hard to let go - even if the murder mystery itself offers no surprises.

The narrative stumbles in the same wetlands a few episodes in, which makes me wonder if this detective story wouldn't have been better off as a full-length film instead? Then it might not have felt as thin and drawn out. I can also be bothered by the sometimes intrusive suspense music and some forced scenes that make the suspense lose some of its finesse. There are also a lot of one-dimensional characters in, for example, the Kengis elite, where it's often enough to just look at the characters to determine which ones are parodically godless pigs and which ones are not. There's not much room for grey area or subtlety here, but at the same time this is a story about the struggle between good and evil, about finding the courage to face evil head on rather than just preaching about it. Of course, the aesthetics and the grubby setting also do a lot to elevate a standard crime story into a delightfully depressing Scandinavian western.

In other words, To Cook a Bear is an entertaining, stylish and luxuriously packaged costume drama that manages to dilute its detective clichés with strong historical anchors, strong northern images and strong performances from Skarsgård, Karlsen, Pernilla August and Simon J Berger (who is excellent as a Tim Blake Nelson-scented horndog). The ending may feel a little short, but the dark atmosphere stays with you long after the credits have rolled.