Rowan Atkinson’s roles in Man vs Bee and now its sequel series Man vs Baby are probably the closest we’ll get to the return of Mr Bean. And that’s for the best—we don’t need to see the teddy bear-carrying, tiny-green-car-driving oaf wobbling around in the cold light of contemporary times. But it’s sure nice to experience the rare pleasure of a Beanish or Bean-adjacent character in Trevor Bingley, a former housesitter who, presumably scarred from his war with a pollinating insect, has moved on to a different profession as a school caretaker.
The comedic jest of this light and fun, albeit slightly stretched (more on that in a moment) four-part series is coaxing from audiences the same recurring thought: “oh no, you idiot!” The fact that Trevor’s a good-natured idiot matters. It’s quickly established—without Atkinson or the writers having to labour the point—that he’s one of those people who are easily dismissed, looked down upon, considered a bit of a loser. You want the best for him, but you also know that, if you lived in his world, you’d probably keep your distance too—if nothing else, the man’s sheer dunderheadness is likely to suck up your time.
The first episode is all about stranding the protagonist with a baby he must care for over the holidays. Trevor finds said bub on a doorstep outside his school’s Christmas recital; a teacher instructs him to place the baby in the production’s manger. Not knowing the infant’s name, Trevor calls him “Jesus.” Amusingly, both these moments were almost certainly engineered to justify a later scene in which Trevor finally persuades a caseworker to come and collect the child. But with the baby nowhere in sight—having wandered out of the room—the caseworker decides Trevor is crazy, after he refers to the infant as “Jesus” and mentions that he came from a manger.
You can almost hear the cogwheels of the script turning, doing whatever’s necessary to narratively legitimize the premise. But it’s also very amusing to watch a fundamentally decent person tormented by the gods. Desperate for a quick injection of moolah to cover his daughter’s tuition at a fancy Paris school, Trevor returns to his old housesitting trade after a conveniently timed offer appears: a hefty wad of cash to look after a very swanky London apartment. Feeling that he has no other options, he brings the baby along to the interview, hiding the little one in his backpack.
This is the sort of setup that practically writes its own jokes: the baby emits “goo-gah” noises, which Trevor pretends are his own; then of course the baby farts. The surprising thing is how little time Trevor and the bub spend by themselves in the apartment; I expected this to be the essence of the show, but it’s mostly concentrated into episode three. You can sense the writers (Atkinson and William Davies) struggling a little to sustain the series when they insert a dog into the mix in the fourth episode, and the baby weirdly fades into the background, almost as if he’s capable of taking care of himself.
This is frothy but satisfying festive season viewing: nothing to write home about, but a nice way to spend the time. Front and center is the rare pleasure of seeing Atkinson occupy that Bean-adjacent space, rehashing some aspects of the shtick i.e. awkward physicality, that wonderful eyebrow raising, the endless struggles with everyday objects. These bits never get old.
