Man Vs Bee

It’s smartly produced and directed, and Atkinson as Bingley is much more engaging than Bean, and is still game enough to spend much of his time on screen in his underpants.

Atkinson, by contrast, is intentionally funny in all nine episodes of this sitcom. Atkinson, with his writer Will Davies and director David Kerr, realise that comedy is not tragedy plus time, but stuff plus idiot.

You certainly need to be in the mood to laugh at slapstick in order to enjoy Man Vs. Bee. But there is no one on the planet who does slapstick better than Rowan Atkinson, and this series shows off all the skills that have made his career so successful.

Atkinson has lost none of his skill and you will watch it quite happily, but it just lacks the genius of Mr Bean. The set pieces are almost too perfect, with slick production and the feeling that everything has been precision-tooled to deliver a satisfying customer experience.

It is slightly too long (it should probably have been six episodes rather than nine, and the pace lulls in the middle), and certain highly capable comedy actors are completely wasted (Fresh Meat's Greg McHugh is just sort of there). But on the whole it's a diverting, lightweight series which caters to its audience and knows what it's there to do.

Man vs Bee is nothing other than a simple, clownish comedy with zero agenda other than to make people laugh.

It's definitely funny. I don't know why its split into part though. Its 'really a seamless movie you can watch in one sitting.

Repetitive as it is, no one can ignore Rowan Atkinson's fantastic slapstick bits.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Rowan Atkinson is best known as Mr. Bean and this latest series* cast him as a housesitter in a beautiful property, where a bee causes him and the house great misfortune. Even though there is dialogue, most of the action features Atkinson's physical encounters in quiet panic. While I was a big fan of Mr. Bean, the humor here seldom lands. There's lots of destruction and mayhem, but most of it is predictable and rather flat. Kids will probably enjoy. *Each ep runs from 10 to 20 minutes with a total running time of 108 minutes, not even a full movie length.

Have you ever watched Mr. Bean and thought 'boy, how much better would this be if he would just talk!?', then you finally got your wish. Somehow they also found a way to take the most forseeable and dull scenarios for talking Mr. Bean to bumble through. Rowan Atkinson is a great actor when he had roles that had something to say other than exclaim "oh gosh!" ten times in a row. Think "Blackadder" if you want to see him at his best. And only because he didn't just 'splat' the Bee, they're dying by the hiveloads anyway, right? I also applaud Netflix' gusto to split up what was very likely produced as a movie into a "Series" by cutting the "story" up into supposedly easy-to-digest roughly 9 Minute pieces. Well, if you dislike cauliflower, would eating a whole head of it in 10 small pieces make it more delectable? You can answer that question for yourself. My answer is a hearty: "nope!" It's a 3 because, well, the CGI Bee is really well animated, folks! But that's about it.