Mr. Bean

John Howard Davies's Mr. Bean (the original ITV and Tiger Aspect series, distinct from the later spin-offs) launched in 1990 and ran for fourteen episodes over five years. The pilot won the Golden Rose of Montreux in 1991, and the series was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Programme. Coming after Blackadder, it made Rowan Atkinson one of the most internationally exported British comic performers of his generation, and Mr. Bean has carried on as an Atkinson franchise through animation, two feature films and a brand-licensing business that continues to this day.

A strange, almost wordless man named Mr Bean (Atkinson) gets through everyday situations (a trip to the dentist, packing for a holiday, an outing to the swimming pool, a Christmas shopping expedition, a school outing) with bizarre logic and reliably disastrous results. Each episode is built from roughly three or four sketches, with the central character passing through them with almost no conventional narrative to link them. Matilda Ziegler plays Bean's long-suffering girlfriend, Irma Gobb, in a recurring role.

Because the comedy works almost entirely without dialogue, the series could go straight into non-English-speaking markets with no dubbing or subtitles, and it became one of the most widely exported British comedies of any era. Its reach has been especially strong in continental Europe, Latin America and Asia, where Atkinson's physical performance has been broadcast again and again in the decades since the original ITV run.