MR. BEAN: A Short History of an Undeniable Classic

In the ranking of widely known British comedies, Mr. Bean easily makes it into the top five (alongside, for example, Fawlty Towers or ’Allo ’Allo). Thanks to this role, Rowan Atkinson secured international fame and a legion of fans. British humor is known for its peculiar wit, so it doesn’t amuse everyone—but it’s hard to deny Mr. Bean’s exceptional popularity.

Before the series was created, Atkinson used various methods to test how people would react to such a character. In 1979, Rowan Atkinson Presents… Canned Laughter aired—a twenty-two-minute and only episode of a sitcom. He played three roles, one of which was Robert Box, a very early version of Mr. Bean. In the early eighties, the actor also performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest arts festival in the world, and later that decade at the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, Canada, where he caused quite a stir. The festival is divided into a French-language and English-language part, and although Atkinson had written his rather absurd lines in English, he insisted on performing in the former. Only later did it become clear that he wanted to find out how his sketch would be received by foreign festivalgoers who didn’t understand English and would have to focus entirely on non-verbal communication. A sort of trial version of Mr. Bean can also be seen in the first season of Blackadder, which stylistically differs noticeably from the second, third, and fourth series.

The first episode of Mr. Bean was eventually broadcast on January 1, 1990. A total of fifteen episodes were produced over the course of five years. After nearly a decade of testing, and taking inspiration from Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot, Atkinson created one of the most recognizable British characters in the world.

In the final version, Mr. Bean is a lonely, eccentric, yet endearing idiot. He rarely speaks, and when he does, it’s in a very low, muffled voice. He drives a bright yellow Mini, which he crudely locks with a padlock, taking the steering wheel with him instead. He doesn’t abide by social conventions, can be mean-spirited, and rarely knows how to behave appropriately in a given situation. Even the simplest tasks—like organizing a New Year’s Eve party or visiting the dentist—are beyond his capabilities. He is friends only with his teddy bear, whom he often dresses in pajamas, buys Christmas gifts for, and waves goodbye to when leaving the house. He treats it like a living being… at least until the moment he needs to paint his flat and doesn’t have a brush on hand.

It’s worth noting that we know very little about the character himself. We don’t know where he works; we don’t even know his name, the character’s actual name is never revealed. The writers later offered two different versions: in the film Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie, his first name is Mr., and in Mr. Bean’s Holiday, it’s Rowan… The lack of this specific knowledge and the peculiar, short, mumbled dialogue make the show all the more universal: to understand the plot, one doesn’t need to know any English—and, frankly, sometimes doesn’t even need to watch the episode from the beginning.

Since 1990, numerous spin-offs have been created capitalizing on Mr. Bean’s popularity. There’s an animated series (Mr. Bean: The Animated Series) and two films (the aforementioned Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie and Mr. Bean’s Holiday). There are games (a whole website is dedicated to them, and one can buy Mr. Bean’s Wacky World for the Nintendo, for example). There are books—Mr. Bean’s Diary in 1992 and Mr. Bean’s Pocket Diary. Atkinson himself still appears as Mr. Bean from time to time in TV shows, music videos, and commercials—in 2012, he even appeared at the opening of the Summer Olympics in London. Although Atkinson said years ago that Mr. Bean would retire, because the sight of a man in his fifties or sixties acting like a child is rather sad, he quickly changed his mind, later stating that he would never entirely stop making guest appearances.

Although Mr. Bean is undeniably a classic of British comedy, I don’t know many fans of the series. Many of them cite Atkinson himself and the stupid humor as reasons. Another British comedy classic is the already mentioned Blackadder, in which Atkinson, in contrast, can express a great deal of emotion with just a glance, and the humor flows almost entirely from the dialogue. These two series are proof that contrary to what one might think, Atkinson is capable of much more than just rolling his eyes. You can’t act in two comedies that are so stylistically different, go down in history, and not be talented. And both Mr. Bean and Blackadder have gone down in history. I know one thing—if Mr. Bean were aware of how popular he is around the world, he’d probably look at us about the same way he looked at that rubber duck.