(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Tue 6 January 2026 14:30, UK
For most of us, Rowan Atkinson will always be Mr Bean, the less sophisticated answer to Jacques Tati’s Mr Hulot, or maybe you’ll always think of him as Blackadder, morphing across time periods as he finds himself in comic situations.
Whatever it may be, you probably can’t just see Atkinson as himself, because he has made a career of playing iconic characters who, love them or hate them, have found stalwart places in the British comedy canon.
Yet, despite the humour that defines his most beloved performances, it turns out he doesn’t have much love for the actual act of filming, much preferring it once it’s all done. In fact, he apologised for not enjoying the shooting on one of his most recent projects, something he is already looking back on with slightly raised eyebrows.
I mean, when you look at the poster, it’s not hard to see why, as Man vs Baby, a Netflix miniseries that recently aired, is clearly not going to hit you on the level of Succession, and not that it has to, of course, but the premise of the show, which involves Atkinson’s character looking after a baby when no one comes to collect him after the school Nativity, is everything you’d expect.
Acting as a sequel to the nine-part series Man vs Bee, in which Atkinson played the same character, who finds himself at odds with a bee while house sitting in a luxurious penthouse, the series is the kind of easy Christmastime watching that can only be afforded by something with such a stupid premise.
It’s hardly an original idea, leaving an incompetent man with a baby (it happens all over the world every day, no less), but you’d think that Atkinson might have found some semblance of enjoyment in filming the comedy, yet, at a Q&A event, he was quick to shoot down a question about his favourite moment of filming, instead revealing (via The Independent), “I have none. I can’t think of anything that I enjoyed filming”.
“But that’s just me when I’m filming, so I apologise for that,” he added quickly, proving clearly that the experience of making Man vs Baby wasn’t as enjoyable as the final product made it look; perhaps acting opposite a baby gets pretty exhausting.
“I think the show is very good, but I can also see holes in it. I keep thinking, ‘hmmm’,” Atkinson admitted, expressing doubt over the result, and, let’s be real, his role as Trevor Bingley across Man vs Bee and Man vs Baby was never going to reach the heights of Mr Bean or Johnny English, and the problem lies in the lack of originality at the core of these projects. Sure, the suit-clad manchild and idiotic spy aren’t exactly original creations either, but Trevor doesn’t have the memorability of these characters to hold up.
Clearly, Atkinson doesn’t feel as strongly towards these recent projects as he does towards his beloved favourites, and maybe that’s a sign to call it a day, for how much longer can he play a bumbling fool for a career?
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