First let me say I love Rowan Adkisson’s “Mr Bean” series. We have them all on dvd. I’ve wanted to drive his little yellow car (are they real?).
However I cannot help but noticing;
Mr. Bean never works a real job so I dont know where he makes any money.
His basic gag is to make fun of rules, standards, and most parts of civilized society. He cuts in line at the hospital. He sneaks into a parking garage for free. He cheats on a test. He shoplifts in a store. He pokes fun of serious occasions like church services, weddings, funerals, and even visiting the queen.
He provides no real benefit to society. His only “friend” is his girlfriend and he treats her poorly.
All this yet he gets by just fine.
So I have to ask, is this a common theme in British comedy? At least in American comedy the characters hold jobs and follow rules.
He really is a poor example of a person to follow.
This is not a series I would follow, but many millions of people over America, Europe and Asia live on family money, or on stocks and shares.
I believe in America the latter were called coupon-clippers since allegedly they’d regularly have to send in little dockets to each company, or maybe their brokers, to claim interest. I doubt if they still do, if they ever did. Plus they could pay someone else to do that.
However they were just as valuable and useful as anyone else. They were most of the upper classes. Not working is more socially useful than working at wickedness.
Bertie Wooster, from P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories, likewise had no job, and provided no benefit to society (that was practically his raison d’etre), and he is one of the great comic creations in the history of literature. Making fun of these ridiculous people is a long tradition in British comedy.
Is a character who manages to paint a room by lighting a stick of dynamite in a paint can supposed to be realistic or setting some kind of positive example?