A studio director from the live-audience years of British comedy, who learned to keep the camera still and the frame wide so that Rowan Atkinson's whole body could do the work. It is unshowy, it is unglamorous, and it is right.
Fi1m perspective
Put Mr Bean at a swimming pool, or in a shoe shop, and watch what the camera does. It does nothing. It stays back and wide, with the whole man and the whole object in the one picture, and it holds while he gets things wrong. That is the method of the studio episodes of Mr. Bean (1990), which John Birkin directed between 1991 and 1995 alongside John Howard Davies and Paul Weiland, and it is the nearest thing he has to a signature: keep out of the way, cut as little as you can, and trust the face.
He came up from the floor rather than from film school. Production management and assistant floor manager jobs on Top of the Pops, The Two Ronnies and Sorry in the late 1970s and early 1980s taught him how a live studio works, and by the end of the 1980s he was directing French and Saunders and Harry Enfield's Television Programme. The 1990s were his decade. Both series of Chef (1993–1994) with Lenny Henry, both series of The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer (1993–1995), both series of The Thin Blue Line (1995–1996) with Rowan Atkinson again and Ben Elton writing, then Victoria Wood specials around the turn of the century, among them Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings (2000). Commercials in between. There is no turn in this career and no late reinvention. He found a job he was good at and kept doing it.
What he was good at is harder to point to than it sounds, because it shows up as absence. A multi-camera sitcom recorded before a live audience lives or dies on where the cameras are and when the cut comes, and a director who gets it wrong is visible in every reaction shot that arrives a beat late. Birkin's work on Mr. Bean got it right, and since it is the only one of his programmes we have reviewed, it carries the weight here. The swimming pool sketch made us laugh harder than a man failing a small task has any business making anyone laugh, and the reason is that we could always see the man and the water together. Nothing was hidden from us and nothing was helped along. The kitchen of Chef and the police station of The Thin Blue Line are the same problem in a smaller box, with Elton's quick dialogue to fit round, and his reputation in the trade says he handled both. We have not reviewed them, so take that as report rather than verdict.
The caveat is the one our review of Mr. Bean made about the series itself: watch more than one at a sitting and you notice how little else there is. A director whose whole craft is standing out of the way leaves no programme that is unmistakably his, and is judged by who he stood behind. Atkinson six times, Henry, Wood, Reeves and Mortimer. That was a good place to stand, and he stood there the right way.
Biography
John Birkin is a British television director and producer. He directed episodes of the comedy series Mr. Bean (1990–1995), including studio direction for several instalments, and both series of The Thin Blue Line (1995–1996).
His other credits include directing Chef! (1993–1994), The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer (1993–1995), and Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings (2000). He has also worked on sketch shows such as Harry Enfield's Television Programme and The Fast Show, as well as numerous comedy specials and commercials.
