I thought the essence of Mr Bean was just that words were unnecessary and basically however hard he tried he failed.

Quote: ShenXian @ 25th May 2019, 4:40 AM

The essence of " Mr. Bean " is freedom,

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I take your point. To me, the essence of Mr Bean is optimism, which is a type of freedom. He is oblivious to many of his mishaps and things turn out OK in the end.

Welcome to the forum ShenXian. I would be interested in knowing what western comedy is popular (or not) in China. My Chinese friend, tells me Chinese jokes come as riddles. Her example was "A bird is shot, how many bullet holes ? Three, because he had his wings crossed over his body." does that joke format sound familiar to you ?

Mr. Bean is very enterprising, so it has contradictions with the objective world. Even if it is often helpless, it is still indomitable.
In general, Western comedy is very popular in China. Of course, due to cultural differences, the influence of some comedies is limited. Nowadays, the most popular among young people is probably the "Big Bang", which has more than a million "likes" in China's largest forum.