Man vs Baby review – Rowan Atkinson’s festive slapstick is the most trite Christmas show possible

Even the ridiculous product placement isn’t the most cynical thing about this exercise in trading in Cosy British Christmascore. It’s a nauseatingly schmaltzy and nonsensical

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.