When I first watched the trailer for Netflix’s Man vs Bee, a comedy series in which Rowan Atkinson plays a housesitter going to war with an invading bee, I had two thoughts: 1) It looked ridiculous (but in a fun way), and 2) How the heck had they managed to stretch the concept into an actual TV series? Wouldn’t it have been better as a movie instead?
The second thought only gathered steam as I started binge-watching the show over the weekend, only to realise the episodes (of which there are nine) average a solid 12 minutes each in terms of run-time.
In total, the show adds up to 108 minutes, and some of the episodes are only 10 minutes in length.
Don’t get me wrong, the show is fun, basically a sort of Home Alone-meets-Mr Bean which sees Atkinson getting himself into increasingly cringey and ridiculous situations as he attempts to deal with his insect problem. It’s entertainingly mindless viewing. But why, when the total runtime is perfect movie length, had they bothered splitting it into nine “chapters”? Was it some kind of financial decision on Netflix’s part? Maybe an experiment to see how long the show held viewer’s attention?
Sheer chaos.
Credit: Netflix
Well, apparently it was neither of those things. Mashable reached out to Netflix on Monday and, while the streamer didn’t have a comment, co-creator and writer Will Davies did. And it turns out the whole thing was planned from the start.
“Having a series of short episodes (originally the idea was ten ten minute episodes) is part of what intrigued Rowan about the project in the first place,” Davies said. “He liked the idea of chapters, and the structural discipline of cliffhangers at the end of each chapter. And there was something about bite size chunks that suited the size of Trevor’s nemesis in the show… i.e. the bee!”
So there you have it. It won’t be for everyone, but the show flies by regardless, and the chapters are at least handy for a cup of tea break.
Man vs Bee(opens in a new tab) is currently streaming on Netflix(opens in a new tab).
