Netflix’s iconoclastic ‘Man vs. Bee’

The show’s director and production designer told me how they staged the destruction of a priceless “art” collection.

The original script for the 2022 comedy series Man vs. Bee, which stars co-creator Rowan Atkinson of Blackadder and Mr. Bean fame, called for the destruction of a work by Jackson Pollock. There’s really no way to talk about this nine-episode series without spoilers, but knowing that house-sitter Trevor (played by Atkinson)—doing his best impersonation of legendary physical comics Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin—inadvertently guts a priceless art collection while trying to kill a bee, does not diminish the joy of watching it in the least.

Not the way one wants a Mondrian to come under the hammer. Credit: Netflix

So why, when an errant hammer embeds itself in a canvas, does the painting look more like Broadway Boogie Woogie than Autumn Rhythm? It was tricky to secure cooperation from the Pollock-Krasner estate, which still owns the copyright for the late Abstract Expressionist’s work, David Kerr, the show’s director, told me.

You can read my full article in artnet.