TL;DR: Rowan Atkinson returns with a Christmas special so syrupy and low-stakes it forgets to be funny, leaving Man vs Baby as a hollow, over-sweet holiday trifle with none of the slapstick spark fans came for.

Every December, like clockwork, I fall for the same trap: I see Rowan Atkinson’s name attached to something festive, I whisper “maybe this time,” and I dive in with the hopeful enthusiasm of someone who still believes a kettle can boil faster if I stare at it aggressively. Man vs Baby is the latest entry in this seasonal ritual of misplaced optimism — a glossy slab of British Christmascore stamped with Atkinson’s signature brand of flailing earnestness. Except this time, the slapstick is barely present, the sentimentality is ladled on with the enthusiasm of a toddler wielding a gravy boat, and the whole experience feels less like a comedy and more like an algorithm-generated hug from a streaming service desperately chasing holiday engagement metrics.

And yet, because I remember the chaotic joy of Man vs Bee — a show that weaponized anxiety, luxury interior design, and one extremely resilient insect — I settled in with mulled wine, ready for more of Atkinson’s meticulous physical comedy. Instead, I got a Christmas special so twee, so glossed in synthetic warmth, that halfway through I started to suspect the Baby was a metaphor. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The show remains aggressively literal at every turn.

The setup is simple in the way only deeply nonsensical Christmas plots can be. Trevor Bingley, our bean-adjacent hero, is back in a storybook village so idyllic it looks like a screensaver designed by a real-estate agent. It’s Christmas, he’s just been fired, and during one last shift helping with the school nativity — cue the obligatory Love Actually homage — he finds a mysterious baby on a doorstep. Surely, he concludes, this is the prop child playing Jesus. Spoiler: it is not. Cue chaos, though not the good kind.

What unfolds is less “man vs baby” and more “man vs baffling social institutions.” Bingley attempts to turn the child over to police and social services, both of whom react with the level of energy you’d expect from overworked NPCs coded with a single line of dialogue. At one point social services assumes the infant is imaginary because Trevor loses track of it briefly, and I found myself longing for the grounded realism of, say, a sentient robot uprising on the Moon. The bar is on the floor and sinking.

Ultimately, because the plot needs things to happen regardless of whether they resemble logic, Bingley carries the baby to a luxe London penthouse where he’s housesitting over Christmas. The tension, ideally, should build from here — an unprepared everyman juggling fragile infant care with slapstick disasters involving priceless furniture, exploding yuletide gadgets, maybe a panicked chase sequence or twelve. But instead, the show deflates like a budget advent calendar. Trevor is competent. The baby is chill. The penthouse survives largely intact. The comedy evaporates.

It’s a strange experience watching Atkinson — a man whose body practically invented modern British slapstick — gliding through scenes with all the ease of a serene hotel concierge. He cooks a full Christmas dinner without burning the flat down. He makes one mildly eccentric decision involving a cork-as-dummy, but otherwise he’s a picture of calm paternal capability. It’s sweet, I guess, if you’re into Hallmark-coded holiday vibes. I came here for the Atkinson chaos engine. I got… a wholesome dad being strangely well-adjusted.

And oh, the product placement. The first series had its discreet Miele and Waitrose moments, but Man vs Baby levels up with the subtlety of a supermarket trolley barreling down a hill. Cadbury’s Heroes appear so frequently they deserve their own screen credit. At one point Trevor hands a tub to a struggling young family squatting in the building’s basement — a subplot so saccharine I almost checked my teeth for cavities — and he delivers a line praising the chocolates as if fulfilling contractual obligations. Yet, bafflingly, the corporate sponsorship isn’t even the most cynical thing going on. The entire show feels dipped in branded nostalgia, a calculated brew of fairy lights, soft-focus moral lessons, and algorithm-approved festive feelings.

There is a mystery threaded through the episodes — because modern streaming mandates “emotional core” like it’s fiber in your cereal — but Man vs Baby sidesteps anything truly poignant with a deus ex machina so wild it could only exist in a Christmas special. Instead of deepening the story, it wipes away the show’s one potentially interesting element, leaving behind something that plays more like a scented candle commercial with a loose narrative stitched on.

Which brings me to the biggest disappointment: the physical comedy never arrives. Rowan Atkinson built a legendary career on orchestrated chaos, on turning simple tasks into balletic disasters, on making the mundane transcendentally ridiculous. But here the mischief never builds, the tension never tightens, and the comedic set pieces never spark into life. It’s all just gentle, sleepy, soft-edged Christmas cheer — pleasant in theory, numbing in practice. Mr Bean would absolutely not approve. Neither did I.

By the end, Man vs Baby doesn’t feel like a whimsical holiday romp. It feels like being trapped inside a snow globe that keeps shaking itself, convinced it’s creating magic, while everyone inside quietly wonders when it’s safe to leave.

Verdict

Man vs Baby is a glossy, well-lit, aggressively cozy Christmas special that trades genuine comedy for schmaltz and leaves Rowan Atkinson stranded in a story that never lets him do what he does best. Beneath the twinkle lights and Cadbury cameos lies a strangely hollow tale — one that mistakes sentiment for substance and whimsy for wit. It’s harmless, sure, but also weightless, predictable, and utterly forgettable. A festive misfire wrapped in shiny paper.