No matter where you know him from, it's likely you consider Rowan Atkinson a comedy icon.
Whether it's from his years time-hopping through formative moments of British history in Blackadder, riding on top of a car on a sofa in Mr Bean, or causing havoc as the worst spy ever in Johnny English, there's something about the 67-year-old's childish sense of humour that has made him a star across the world.
Now, he's looking to make a whole new generation of kids and parents laugh alike in Netflix's Man vs Bee, where he plays well-meaning Trevor, a house-sitter whose first major job goes spectacularly wrong.
Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, Rowan breaks down his career so far, how it led to Man vs Bee, and who he thinks could fill his spot in the comedy pantheon.
As someone who is so well known for their farcical and satirical comedy, what do you think it is about this kind of comedy that makes it stand the test of time?
I suppose it's more timeless. Dialogue – the way that people talk and talk to each other – does change more as the decades go by. We do talk differently to how we did 30 or 40 years ago, and certainly more differently to how we talked 100 years ago.
Whereas visual comedy is generally about simple, human situations involving human instincts and human behaviour, and those things change far less. Also, of course, it means that you are automatically granted immunity from cultural and linguistic differences.
But in the end, humanity shares the more visual experience than they do a verbal experience. And therefore, internationally, obviously it's an easier thing to sell.
Also, of course, it's good for children. Children like it and adults like it too. It's more about the human condition. I've always thought visual comedy or the instincts you display in visual comedy, you were sort of born with, whereas instincts you display in verbal comedy are something you've learned since birth.
They're about your upbringing. They're about your culture, or the culture in which you've been brought up. And of course, everyone's brought up in slightly different cultures. I think it's quite a unifying thing, visual comedy, and I personally like it and it's something I have found I can do.
It's arguable that you and your characters – particularly Mr Bean and Blackadder – are internationally emblematic of UK comedy, and have been for decades. You must be really proud of that legacy.
Yeah. I'm always nervous about being proud of things, but I'm pleased if people have liked it, which they seem to have done. I just sort of measure things by the box-office returns or the viewing figures – that's my way of judging success, and they seem to have worked on that score. So hopefully we can continue to do something similar into the future.
With your legacy in mind, is there a comedian you have your eye that you feel you could potentially pass that baton on to?
Oooh. No, I'm not sort of knowledgeable, unfortunately. I'm someone who doesn't take – and this isn't a good thing, I have to apologise and admit that I don't take a tremendous amount of interest in the comedy world.
I tend to be in my own world, and I tend not to look sideways or backwards or forwards. But I mean, in terms of visual comedy, I'm not aware you know, stand up is still the big and dominant comedy concept, and that is rarely visual, or at least not predominantly visual. It's predominantly verbal.
Indeed there are lots of people whom I do admire. I admire Sacha Baron Cohen, but he's not really a visual comedian. He's more verbal and character forming. But I just admire his courage and his bravery. I like people who are brave, who stick their necks out and go for things that others dare not go for. [Cohen] takes no prisoners. I would never do quite what he does, but I do admire it.
Why did you decide to make Man vs Bee a series as opposed to one long movie, considering each episode only clocks in at around 10 minutes?
Creatively, we have regarded it as a movie. When we were writing and creating it, we knew we had to make a story that was roughly the length of a movie. But then the idea was to cut it up into 10 slices. And of course, when you do that, it means you have to contrive to have a cliffhanger of some kind at the end of every episode, because Netflix is very keen, as you can probably gather, on clickthrough.
They really want people to click through to the next episode at the end of the previous episode. So you've got to have some little twist or drama that makes people want to know what happens next. So they had to be built-in in a way that you wouldn't have to normally in scenes for a movie.
But why it's 10 minutes – it started off actually because we were actually going to make it for a different platform, and then that platform didn't didn't want it, and didn't like the idea. So we were thinking, 'Well, would Netflix be interested in 10-minute episodes?', which is how we thought of it, and they were very keen, so Netflix got the gig.
And they've been great actually. Very, very good people to work with and for and that's not just because they've been paying me to work for them!
Were there any incidents on the set of Man vs Bee that blurred the lines of reality and fiction? Have you ever made a comedy of errors similar to that of Trevor in real life?
Occasionally, I'll make them but I can never think of these things when I'm asked to think of them. I mean, certainly I don't have any fear of bees. I'm pretty good with insects, I'm reasonably fearless. Spiders, I'm fine.
Actually, Trevor is pretty fearless, isn't he, really? He's not scared, he's increasingly annoyed and obsessed. There's no real reason why he should be so obsessed you know, it's just a bee, just ignore it and it'll go away, but he doesn't want to. And that's his fatal error, which leads and develops in our story.
Man vs Bee is available now on Netflix.
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Freelance writer, Digital Spy
Tilly is Gold-Standard NCTJ accredited journalist with eight years of experience in entertainment journalism.
She has been heard giving her insight on the latest TV stories on BBC Radio across the country and on BBC News.
Previously working with The Sun Online, Yahoo, Metro.co.uk and Independent IE amongst others, she joined the Digital Spy team from 2021-2023 as Deputy TV Editor (Maternity cover).
With a speciality in TV drama and true crime, Tilly has been praised for her exclusive content with A-list stars ranging from Sir David Attenborough to the lawyers behind Making A Murderer.
She’s happy to report her mum now takes her seriously as a journalist as she got to interview George Clooney once.
