Man vs. Bee

2020s British tv sitcom

Trevor Bingley, a divorced man down on his luck, gets a chance to start a new job as a house sitter for rich couple, which did not ends well.

Trevor Bingley, a divorced man down on his luck, turns a new leaf and starts job as house sitter. His first assignment is with rich couple, Nina and Christian, who live in a very modern house full of electronic gadgets. As the couple is in a hurry to start their holiday they leave him with manual for the house equipment. Unfortunately for him he stumbles upon an enemy that will make his life a misery - a small, but persistent bee that invades the house. While surrounded by valuable art and modern gadgets Trevor tries to cope to the limit of his abilities.

Rowan Atkinson and William Davies worked together on all three Johnny English movies, none of which was a huge success. Here, in an Netflix production, they again joined their forces to bring something quite similar in style and close to one of the Atkinson’s greatest achievements, Mr Bean. Man vs. Bee however is a completely different level of quality. It is a shining example how not to write comedy - all of the future gags are sold within first 3 minutes of the first episode when rich couple shows him around the house.

"Library is off the limits, especially for the dog", so of course he accidentally lets the dog inside. "This piece of art is extremely valuable", so of course he damages is within first two episodes. "Do not let dog eat anything else than the special food", so of course the dog gets sick within four episodes, and so on and so on. It is a show full of jokes that are visible miles away and even when they happen they are not really much of a jokes anyway. Rowan Atkinson did some great performances in his life, but this one is not one of them - he did well, but the material was bad enough that his acing and comic skills would not make much difference.

And there is another layer to how bad this show is - not only most of the jokes are visible miles away, not only some of them are really outdated or poor taste (like Trevor smearing himself in dog’s poop), but some parts do not even make much sense. Why would Trevor face court when he was employee of the company, so the company should be sued by house owners, not he personally. The police officer shows up in the morning after alarm was triggered hours before... Why? What is the point? Trevor cuts out a hole in a car and moments later sits down to ask himself "what have I done?". He brought the bee outside to set it free and... of course left the doors open, so the bee would return. He uses voice override for alarm, when he already knows the codes...

Just like many other Netflix productions Man vs. Bee looks like money thrown at creators with some reputation, who cannot deliver a good quality product anymore. There are more product placements in Man vs. Bee than there are good jokes, not to mention no one with sound mind would commission a series that looks like feature film cut into chapter to make them look like planned episodes. We have here two very experienced comedy actors, Rowan Atkinson and Julian Rhind-Tutt, who are given poorly written material to work with and it is actually sad that their talents are wasted on production like Man vs. Bee.

Rating	2.8
Funny	2 / 10
Entertaining	2 / 5
Characters	1 / 5
Nonrepetitive	2 / 5