Trevor Bingley is not Mr Bean, but the two have a few things in common. For a start, they are both self-destructively single-minded when it comes to overcoming trivial annoyances. In Netflix’s 2022 series Man vs Bee, Bingley ended up building a fake explosive-laced hive to destroy the insect who refused to vacate the swish home he was house-sitting; for Bean, life consists almost exclusively of finding absurd solutions to minor problems. Both are pitiable figures: Bean because he’s a walking disaster zone; Bingley because he’s lonely and broke, having lost numerous jobs due to general ineptitude. Last but not least, they are both embodied by Rowan Atkinson, who bestows the pair with his distinctive brand of sprightly ungainliness.
There are major differences, however. Bingley is a human who can talk, is aware of social niceties and has a backstory, which mainly features a teenage daughter he dotes on and gratingly refers to as “Sweetpea”. Bean, on the other hand, was essentially beamed in from space: some episodes of the original 1990s series open with him dropping from the sky bathed in an alien light source.
Still, Man vs Bee – co-created by Atkinson and writer Will Davies – was essentially Bean reimagined for the streaming age: a comedy with a backdrop of aspirational luxury that managed to pull off the sort of scream-inducingly stressful and satisfyingly callback-laced farce the viewing public has lately been starved of. Man vs Bee also had a strong sentimental streak: clearly our hearts were supposed to bleed for Bingley, who wanted to take his daughter camping but had to cancel because of his new job. It wasn’t exactly a tragedy of epic proportions (until he ended up in prison, that is), but it did make sense. Do not expect the same for its follow-up.
In Man vs Baby, Bingley is back, struggling to make ends meet in a chocolate-box village in the home counties. It’s Christmas and he has just been let go as a primary school caretaker. His final job is to assist with the nativity (the opportunity to shamelessly channel Love Actually is not wasted). There, he discovers a baby on the doorstep; this must be the local child starring as Jesus in the play!
Except, worryingly, it’s not – so when Bingley lands a last-minute, lucrative housesitting gig in central London, he tries to hand over the baby to the police (too busy to help) then social services, who assume the child is a figment of Bingley’s imagination after he temporarily misplaces it in his house. (Save your screams of incomprehension, there’s so much more senselessness to come.) There’s only one thing for it: smuggle the anonymous baby into the penthouse flat he’s looking after over the festive period and hope the authorities collect it sharpish.
It goes about as smoothly as it possibly could. Bingley is – lest we forget for one sweetpea-ing second – a devoted father, so he broadly knows how to care for a baby. Yes, he makes eccentric choices (a cork is subbed in for a dummy), but generally lives harmoniously with the infant as he waits for a bizarrely unbothered Westminster social services to arrive. In fact, such is his newfound competence that slapstick and other laughs are thin on the ground; Bingley even whips up an elaborate Christmas dinner without breaking a sweat.
One complaint critics had about Man vs Bee was the product placement (Miele, Waitrose). This time, Cadbury’s Heroes are spotlighted on multiple occasions. I had to laugh when Bingley gives a pack to the young family squatting in the basement of the opulent block of flats (the less said about this ludicrously mawkish subplot the better), and informs them that the confectionery produced by Britain’s best-loved chocolate brand is “really nice, actually!”. The difference here is that these product placements are far from the most cynical thing about Man vs Baby, which trades on Cosy British Christmascore in the most trite way possible, and delivers its celebration of festive togetherness with cloying warmth.
Still, we watch because – as is seemingly mandatory for all streamer shows – there is a dark mystery at the core of Man vs Baby. Namely, who is being tormented by the loss of their child? Or worse, who isn’t?
In the event, any troubling subtext is swerved via a deus ex machina that is quite frankly bananas. I wish the same could be said about the action itself, which never escalates into the grand, high-wire, socially subversive physical comedy we expect from Atkinson. Instead, we just get a nauseatingly schmaltzy and nonsensical dose of Christmas cheer helmed by a kind-hearted, capable man. Mr Bean would never.