Mr. Bean

Mr. Bean is a British comedy television series consisting of 14 half-hour episodes. The main role in the series is performed by British actor Rowan Atkinson. The script for the series was written by Rowan Atkinson, Robin Driscoll, Richard Curtis, and Ben Elton. The first series was released on January 1, 1990, and the last, “A Haircut by Mr. Bean of London,” on November 15, 1995.

All of the series recount Mr. Bean’s “exploits” in various tasks from everyday life and often culminate in highly unusual solutions, sometimes resulting in a bit of destruction. Bean rarely speaks, much of the humor of the series lies in his interactions with other people and his unusual solutions to problems.

The style of the television series was heavily influenced by the comic actors of silent movies.

During the six years of its run, the series won a huge number of fans in the United Kingdom alone. For example, in 1992 the series “Mr. Bean and His Trouble” was watched by 18.74 million people. In addition, the series has won many international awards and prizes, including the Golden Rose.

The rights to the series were bought in more than two hundred countries. There were also two feature-length films, “Bean” and “Mr. Bean’s Holiday,” as well as a series of short animated films (cartoons that won great popularity among children as well).

And later – and as of 2021 still – new first-person video sketches (Handy Bean) and music video animations on the official youtube channel of Mr. Bean (for example, a video sketch where Mr. Bean – in a modern version by Rowan Atkinson makes a snowflake with his hands) are released.

Mr. Bean was invented by Rowan Atkinson when he was a student at Oxford University in the 1980s. So the homeland of Mr. Bean can be considered Edinburgh, where an annual theater festival was held, which brought together young talented students. However, the character’s current name (Mr. Bean) was invented only in time for the series. There were other “vegetable” names for Bean that “didn’t pass the casting,” such as Mr. Cauliflower.

A similar character named Robert Box, played by Atkinson, appeared in 1979 in the situation comedy Canned Laughter (sitcom) by one of Britain’s leading television corporations, ITV.

In 1987, one of Mr. Bean’s first appearances was at Just for Laughs, a comedy festival that has been held since 1983 in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). When the organizers of the event were putting together the festival program, Atkinson insisted that he perform in French rather than English. Since Rowan’s number did not include any dialogues in French, the organizers could not understand what his decision had to do with it. As it turned out, Atkinson’s number at the festival was to test the audience’s reaction to the new character, Mr. Bean. The comedian wanted to see how non-English-speaking audiences would accept the image he created.

Rowan Atkinson says he was inspired to create the character of Mr Bean by a character in an old French comedy, Monsieur Hulot, played by the French comedian Jacques Tati. Mr. Bean is stylistically similar to a silent movie (sitcom or action comedy), as there is virtually no dialogue in the series. This allowed the series to be shown around the world almost without translation.

In November 2012 in an interview with The Daily Telegraph actor admitted that if you go on to play a “childish” roles at this age, it looks “pretty sad. Rowan Atkinson decided to say goodbye to this image and switch to dramatic characters.