Mr Bean Reaches 35 Million YouTube Followers in 35th Anniversary Year
Comments Off on Mr Bean Reaches 35 Million YouTube Followers in 35th Anniversary YearToday, content powerhouse Banijay Entertainment reveals another milestone for the globally-loved Mr Bean – surpassing 35M subscribers on its main YouTube channel – as the brand marks 35 years on-air. In addition, Mr Bean: The Animated Series has extended its UK presence with the recent launch of the latest series on ITV2 this month, following its premiere earlier this year in the UK on ITVX and Boomerang.
Cast your mind back…the year is 1990. The Hubble Space Telescope launches. Nelson Mandela is released from prison. East and West Germany are officially reunified. Madonna’s Vogue tops the charts. And Mr Bean lands on British screens. Immortalised by the comedic genius of Rowan Atkinson, Mr Bean premiered on ITV on 1 January 1990, watched by 13.45M viewers. Co-created by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, in the 35 years since, it has been in continual distribution, broadcast in 200+ territories. The original live-action series delivered some of the most iconic comedy moments of all time, and in addition to two successful feature films in 1997 and 2007, in 2002 it was successfully reimagined in animation form. Now, in 2025, Mr Bean is an internet sensation, accumulating nearly a quarter of a billion subscribers across social media platforms.
Rowan Atkinson says: “You have to evolve and keep the changes coming to maintain relevancy. I quite like the fact we’ve taken Mr Bean from the theatre, where he started in the 1970’s, to live-action, films, animation and now YouTube! Generations enjoy the character equally – he’s a child trapped in a man’s body, and that’s always fun to watch.”
The fourth season of Mr Bean: The Animated Series premiered earlier this year in the UK on ITVX and Boomerang, and globally on Warner Bros. Discovery’s kids’ channels and streaming services through deals agreed by Banijay Rights. It is produced by Tiger Aspect Kids & Family (part of Banijay Kids & Family) and executive produced by Tom Beattie and Rowan Atkinson, who also provides the voice.
Mr Bean Facts
- Only 14 live action episodes were ever produced
- There are 182 episodes (and counting!) of the animated series
- Nearly 250M subscribers across social media platforms
- 35M subscribers on main YouTube channel
- 75M subscribers across all 19 Mr Bean YouTube channels
- 148M followers across Facebook – the 4th biggest page in the world
- 10M followers on Instagram
- 11.5M followers on TikTok
- Over 130 syndications of Mr Bean animated and live-action FAST Channels
- The series spawned two films, Bean: The Movie and Mr Bean’s Holiday
- Original theme tune composed by Howard Goodall
- The opening line ‘Ecce homo qui est faba’ translates to ‘Behold the man who is a bean’
- Goodall also composed the music for the live-action and animated series and the two feature films
- First existed as part of a sketch at the Oxford Playhouse in 1979
- Mr Bean was once a contestant in Blind Date for a 1993 Comic Relief special
- According to his passport, Mr Bean’s first name is Mr
- Creators toyed with the name of the character – Mr Cauliflower and Mr White were both considered
- Mr Bean is known and celebrated all around the world
- Reimagined in street art form from Kochi to Penang
- Mr Bean’s image was even created out of rice varieties in a paddy field in China
- Several of the iconic Minis were used during filming – one is on display at the National Motor Museum