Rowan Atkinson Isn’t Returning to Mr Bean or Johnny English—Only This Revival Tempts Him

Rowan Atkinson has played a lot of memorable fools and schemers, but if you ask him which old gig is worth dusting off, he points straight at one: Blackadder. Not Mr Bean, not Johnny English. Blackadder. The same one that earned him a BAFTA for best light entertainment performance back in 1989 for Blackadder Goes Forth.

What Atkinson actually said about a revival

In a 2021 interview, Atkinson was unusually blunt about the job and why Blackadder is the exception to his usual rule of not loving the process:

"I don’t actually like the process of making anything - with the possible exception of Blackadder, because the responsibility for making that series funny was on many shoulders, not just mine. But Blackadder represented the creative energy we all had in the ’80s. To try to replicate that 30 years on wouldn’t be easy."

That last line is the tricky part. Blackadder worked because a roomful of very sharp writers and performers were all firing at once. Trying to bottle that again decades later is a tall order, even for this crew.

A quick refresher on Blackadder

Blackadder was a run of four period British sitcoms (plus several one-offs) that aired on BBC1 from 1983 to 1989. Every series dropped Edmund Blackadder (Atkinson), a scheming antihero, into a different historical era, with Tony Robinson’s Baldrick shuffling along as his catastrophically loyal dogsbody. The format was a cheat code: new time period, new targets, same biting dynamic.

Why a revival actually makes sense

The show’s big weapon was razor-edged satire about class, power, and bureaucracy, wrapped in elegant stupidity. That still plays. The anthology setup also means a return wouldn’t have to cannibalize the originals; they could set it anywhere from the Regency to right now and keep the spirit intact. There’s also the simple joy of seeing those faces again, if the team can find a premise that feels inevitable instead of nostalgic.

Is anything actually happening?

Writer-producer Richard Curtis teased last year that there might be movement on new Blackadder plans. That’s not a greenlight, but it’s more than radio silence. In other words: keep your hopes at a healthy simmer.

Meanwhile: Atkinson’s new thing is Man Vs Baby

While he’s picky about resurrections, Atkinson is very much active. He has a new four-episode British comedy miniseries called Man Vs Baby, a follow-up to his 2022 Netflix farce Man vs. Bee. He co-created and wrote it with longtime collaborator William Davies and is back as Trevor Bingley. Post-Bee chaos, Trevor has retreated to a quieter life as a school caretaker, until a lucrative Christmas penthouse gig pulls him back into trouble. When nobody picks up the Baby Jesus from the school nativity, Trevor ends up spending the holidays with a very unexpected plus-one.

The surprising part: he does not like Mr Bean (as a person)

At a London screening for Man Vs Baby, Atkinson said the quiet part out loud about his most famous character:

"I dislike Mr Bean as a person; I certainly would never like to have dinner with him."

He also admitted there’s a reason Bean works on screen even if he’d avoid him in real life: he recognizes a lot of his 10-year-old self in the character. And when he lined up his creations, he put Trevor Bingley on the opposite end of the spectrum:

"Trevor Bingley, in his basic form, is arguably one of the nicest people I’ve ever played. Because I think most people I’ve played are sort of deeply unpleasant, really, you know, Mr Bean is a selfish, self-serving, anarchic child."

Quick stats

• Blackadder: 4 seasons (1983-1989); IMDb 8.8/10; Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 85%, Audience 89%; streams on BritBox.
• Man Vs Baby: 2025; IMDb 6.6/10; Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 82%, Audience 50%; streams on Netflix.

Bottom line: If Atkinson steps back into Edmund Blackadder’s boots, it’s because the idea is unmissable, not just nostalgic. Until then, Man Vs Baby is the current chaos, complete with tinsel, a penthouse, and one very poorly supervised nativity prop.