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Key Points
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- Rowan Atkinson stars in Netflix’s new comedy Man vs Baby, a follow-up to Man vs Bee
- Man vs Baby features Atkinson’s signature physical comedy and is set during Christmas with improved storytelling
- The show is a light, enjoyable watch, showcasing Atkinson’s charm, and is a notable improvement over its predecessor
Created with AI assistance. Quality assured by Metro editors.
When Netflix first harnessed Rowan Atkinson’s comedic brilliance, the result was the kind of TV show you couldn’t believe existed.
Not since The Bee Movie had the fusion of comedy and the honey hive created such baffling results as 2022’s Man vs Bee. And there were nine episodes of it.
That epic struggle (both the show and paying attention to it) had a directionless premise and quite blatant intellectual property plunder from Atkinson’s own back catalogue. The comedy was entirely derived from his non-verbal, clumsy Mr Bean-ing, but this time, sapped of all uncanny unpredictability and entirely orchestrated around a bee, rendered in hideous CGI.
One review at the time compared it to Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite, if Parasite was ‘the worst thing you’d seen in your life’.
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That might have taken some journalistic licence for laughs (who among us?), but what a blessed relief that Atkinson’s follow-up Man vs Baby is significantly better. And only four episodes.
Of the two seen for review purposes, Atkinson is back as divorced dad Trevor Bingley, living in one of those syrupy nowheresville market towns where everyone knows your name.
Rowan Atkinson is back doing his non-verbal Mr Bean-ing (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
All four episodes are now on Netflix (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
It’s Christmastime and Trevor is slowly freezing to death in his icebox house to save turning on the heating for when his daughter and ex-wife come to visit. That is, until they decide Christmas in the tropics will be better (fair).
It isn’t just the heating bills Trevor’s got to pay: he’s about to be laid off and everything coming through the letterbox is dripping in ominous final notice-red, plus he’s agreed to fork over £9,000 for his daughter to go to the Sorbonne. With this level of specificity, we can only assume she will wander across the realms of the Netflix Cinematic Universe into a scene in Emily in Paris.
You’re starting to wonder, where’s that baby we were promised? Stick with me through this, it’s a bit fraught. There’s a nativity on at the primary school where Trevor works as the caretaker (for one day more) and they’ve been promised a real-life baby to take on the starring role as Jesus.
The baby is a huge upgrade from the bee (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
But when all the kids have packed off for the hols, nobody comes to collect the incredibly cute bundle of joy, played by a very competent set of identical twins.
Almost as if this is a TV show and not real life, Trevor is contacted by that old housesitting agency that inadvertently employed him to wreck a sprawling smart mansion last series. Except, there’s new ownership and they don’t know about that.
This time he’s the last-minute fill-in for a piece of London real estate so swanky you’ll wonder ‘Could this be a real apartment? – it isn’t – with owners who will pay handsomely enough for Trevor to swing the Sorbonne. Until he and the baby get to taking the place apart, one Hermes scarf by Fortnum and Mason’s hamper at a time.
As an aside, there’s a quantity of product placement so voluminous you can’t tell what’s real and what’s storytelling. With brands like Dom Perignon name-checked and wafted in front of our peepers, it starts to make sense how Netflix might stump that $82billion for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Man vs Baby: Key details
Director: David Kerr
Writers: Will Davies and Rowan Atkinson
Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Susannah Fielding, Steve Edge, Sunil Patel, Robert Bathurst, Ellie White, Angus Imrie, Sunetra Sarker, Alanah Bloor, Claudie Blakley
Release date: December 11
Run time: 4 x 30 minutes
Stick it on this Christmas for an easy family watch (Picture: Courtesy of Netflix)
Some seemingly minor tweaks have vastly improved things for Man vs Baby. The barmy concept has better stakes and is more realistic with Atkinson acting against a child, as opposed to what was presumably at first a tennis ball. A byproduct is there’s less of the antagonistic infanticide vibe the title suggests, not that that’s hugely missed.
Plus, that slimmed-down two-hour runtime is a coup, albeit posing the question of why this is a miniseries as opposed to a film.
The gags are entirely hung on Atkinson’s ineffable Atkinson-ness as a doddering man who should not be left alone with expensive things. Is he wasted on this? Well, yes. But when he can still contort his features in ways it’s impossible not to laugh at, it’s hard to begrudge more Atkinson.
Stick it on this Christmas and you will at least laugh more than you ever did at that hateful bee, even if you do come away craving an out-of-this-world expensive glass of Dom and wondering why Atkinson revisited this character as opposed to any of his other better ones.
Man vs Baby is available to stream on Netflix.
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