TL;DR: Thoughtful, mesmerizing, and boldly human. To Cook a Bear proves that sometimes the slowest burn leaves the deepest mark.

There’s a particular kind of Scandinavian darkness that always gets under my skin – not the kind that comes from endless nights or melancholy poetry, but the kind that hums beneath the surface of the best Nordic stories. When I pressed play on To Cook a Bear on Disney+, I was ready for something cold, strange, and philosophical. What I didn’t expect was how quietly hypnotic it would be – a historical crime drama that starts as a fable, grows into a detective story, and ends as a haunting meditation on faith, fear, and what it means to be human.

Adapted from Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel, To Cook a Bear isn’t just another grim mystery set in the snow. It’s a slow, luminous tale about community, myth, and the messy intersection between science and superstition. At its center is Gustaf Skarsgård’s Pastor Laestadius, a reformer, botanist, and reluctant sleuth who arrives in the remote village of Kengis in 1852, bringing both compassion and disruption to a place mired in prejudice. With him is his adopted Sami son, Jussi (a remarkably subtle Emil Karlsen), whose journey from outcast to observer of the human soul gives the series its emotional heartbeat.

The setup sounds simple enough: a maid named Hilda vanishes, bear tracks are found, and panic blooms across the frozen landscape. But To Cook a Bear is less about solving a mystery than about understanding why people need monsters to make sense of their world. Every villager, from the fire-and-brimstone mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August, radiating charisma) to the bitter sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), is wrestling with their own faith and fear. The bear – real or imagined – becomes a mirror for every human cruelty that lies beneath the surface.

What makes the show work so well is its refusal to rush. The pacing is deliberate, almost meditative, allowing the stark beauty of the landscape to breathe. Director Trygve Allister Diesen frames the northern wilderness not just as a setting but as a character – vast, indifferent, and achingly alive. You can practically feel the frostbite through the screen, hear the crunch of snow under boots, and smell the woodsmoke drifting through the air. It’s a series that immerses you, not with spectacle but with atmosphere.

Skarsgård, meanwhile, delivers one of his most layered performances. His pastor is part detective, part philosopher, part prophet on the edge of madness. There’s a scene where he examines fragments of broken pottery and tufts of hair, piecing together Hilda’s fate not with modern logic but with an almost spiritual intuition. What could have been ridiculous becomes riveting in Skarsgård’s hands. His eyes flicker with both terror and wonder, and you start to believe that he truly sees something the rest of us can’t.

The relationship between Laestadius and Jussi anchors everything. Their bond is tender, complex, and often heartbreaking. Jussi, marked by both his heritage and his trauma, becomes the show’s soul – the one who bears witness to the ways faith can both heal and destroy. Through him, the series explores colonialism, class, and belonging with a depth rarely seen in period dramas. There’s no sentimentality here, just empathy earned the hard way.

What surprised me most, though, is how To Cook a Bear manages to balance its intellectual weight with genuine suspense. The tension builds not through jump scares or plot twists, but through moral uncertainty. Every clue the pastor uncovers peels back another layer of human frailty. By the time the truth emerges, the mystery feels less like a puzzle solved and more like a confession heard. The question isn’t who killed Hilda, but what kind of faith survives when the world refuses to make sense.

It’s not perfect. The tone occasionally wobbles, and a few scenes flirt with melodrama. There’s an odd moment or two where the show’s earnestness teeters toward unintentional humor (yes, even that now-infamous evidence-licking scene). But the sincerity of the storytelling redeems it. This isn’t irony masquerading as intelligence – it’s a show that believes deeply in the power of belief itself, and that’s rare enough to celebrate.

At its best, To Cook a Bear recalls The Essex Serpent or The North Water, yet it forges its own identity – something dreamlike and defiant. It’s a meditation on how truth gets buried under fear, how compassion survives in the coldest places, and how sometimes, to find what’s human, you have to follow the bear into the dark.

By the final episode, I wasn’t laughing at its eccentricities; I was moved by its conviction. The ending doesn’t offer neat answers, but it lingers like the aftertaste of smoke – bittersweet, mysterious, and deeply satisfying.

So yes, it’s strange. Yes, it’s slow. But To Cook a Bear dares to be both. And in an age of disposable, algorithm-driven content, that feels almost revolutionary.

Verdict: 

To Cook a Bear is a hauntingly beautiful and quietly profound Nordic drama that transforms a murder mystery into a meditation on faith, love, and survival. It’s atmospheric, ambitious, and unapologetically strange – a work that rewards patience with poetry.