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.
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.
Sounds like fun!