Mr. Bean: The Animated Series
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 The role he was drawn to play.
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Mr. Bean: The Animated Series (also known as simply Mr. Bean) is a British animated television sitcom that is a spin-off to the original live-action series Mr. Bean.
Premise
This animated adaptation serves as a follow-up to the Mr. Bean franchise. As in the original live-action series, Mr. Bean continues using his noble wits to solve problems he stumbles upon in London. This time, it is revealed that he lives in an apartment owned by his mean landlady Mrs. Wicket.
Why It Has The Role He Was Drawn To Play
- The series is very faithful to the original source material by having barely any dialogue at all.
- Like the original series, Mr Bean himself is a funny, yet childish, dimwitted and foolish protagonist, except here he is slightly more likable than in the original series.
- Teddy still serves as the straight man to the series.
- Unlike the original series, Irma Gobb returns as a regular character in this series, this time with her own female Teddy. In addition, Irma is once again Bean's girlfriend in this show, despite that in the original series' Irma had dumped him in the episode "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean".
- Brilliant voice acting. Rowan Atkinson and Matilda Ziegler even returned from the original live-action series to reprise their roles as Mr. Bean and Irma Gobb respectively.
- Good animation, especially in the revived seasons.
- Despite being cancelled for many years (starting from 2004), the series was revived with a new season in 2015 though to 2016, and another in 2019.
- Some episodes have endings that are very satisfying, especially in "Neighbourly Bean".
- The show even has it share of heartwarming moments. Most notably the episode "Egg and Bean", in which Bean helps a young stork to fly.
- Very impressive score courtesy of Howard Goodall, who previously composed the original live-action series, as well as the two film adaptations Bean and Mr. Bean's Holiday.
- Very well done slapstick and silent humor.
- Mrs. Wicket, Bean's landlady is hilarious, especially the running gags when she screams in terror to the point it scares the birds away outside her flat (in the later seasons was replaced by just yelling Bean's name) and whenever she closes the apartment's door, a portrait hanging in the wall it falls apart.
- Bean still drives his renowned Mini.
- This show does pays homage to the live-action Mr. Bean, such as the reference of the original series' opening intro from the season 3 finale "Double Trouble" after Mr. Pod says goodbye to Mr. Bean peacefully, but unlike the original live-action series, despite Bean fell from the spotlight, Teddy also appears.
"On No!" Qualities
- It got an awful licensed game by the infamous Blast Entertainment.
- Despite being a kid's show, one episode called "Art Thief" shows a picture of a naked lady. The same goes for "Roadworks", "Nurse!" and "Opera Bean", in which in those episodes Bean is seen naked, even though the first 2 seasons of the animated Mr. Bean was originally meant to be viewed by adults before it went popular with children, but since it was aired on CITV during the 3rd season, it removed some of the inappropriate content, but they still got away with it from the re-runs of the first 2 seasons, along with a episode from the 4th season. "Opera Bean." Fortunately, at least the adult content in these four seasons were kept to a minimum and aren't overused to the point of being inappropriate for family audiences.
- The way the seasons are structured are confusing. In most cases, there are five seasons (with S1-3 being the original run, 2002-2004 and S4-5 being the revival series 2015-2019), however, confirmed by TigerAspect, there are actually three seasons (S1 being the original run, 2002-2004, S2 being the first revival, 2015-2016 and S3, 2019).
- Some episodes contain bad endings for Mr. Bean himself even though at times he doesn't deserve it, such as "In the Wild" (which was a terrible way to start the series), "No Parking", "Cat-Sitting", "Young Bean", and so on.
- The animation, whilst very good for the most part, can be pretty unpleasant at times (especially in the first season, despite using traditional animation).
- Tiger Aspect Productions' animation, while an improvement, is more restricted due to the usage of rigs.
- It has it's fair share of bad/mediocre episodes such as:
- In The Wild (Which started the series and season 1 on a sour note)
- Magpie
- Cat-Sitting
- Dead Cat
- Tootache
- The Visitor
- Neighbourly Bean
- A Grand Invitation
- No Pets
- Caring Bean
- A New Friend
- Birthday Bother
- Scrapper Cleans Up
- Season 5, while not a bad season, is the weakest season with some changes from Season 4:
- Mr. Bean, while still likeable, got flanderized from a clumsy yet, helpful man who wants to save the day into an insecure idiot who does not learn anything but to mess around.
- Some episodes got rehashed like A Dog's Life is No Pets from Season 3, but with dogs appearing in Mrs. Wicket's apartment and Big Stink is Spring Cleaning but with Mr. Bean getting tortured even more because of his stench.
Trivia
- In 2015, Varga Budapest Studio no longer animates the show. It's now animated in-house by Tiger Aspect Productions itself.
- On the United Kingdom and Australia DVDs of Volumes 1-6 (the first 3 seasons), they only included 47 out of 52 episodes. Instead, the remainder five episodes were included as extras on DVDs of the original live-action Mr. Bean just because they were rated PG (a rating still suitable enough for a kids show) and the DVDs were chosen to be rated U (G in Australia).
- In January 2014, a revival of the series was announced, with Rowan Atkinson returning as the voice of Mr. Bean, along with other cast members reprising their roles. The revival featured two new series and 78 episodes; it premiered on 16 February 2015 and ended on 8 October 2019 on CITV. The revival contained more actual dialogue than in the original series, which mostly featured little sound effects and mumbling.
- In Italy, from Season 4, the show is dubbed in Italian for the first time.
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