Rowan Atkinson

Rowan Atkinson is a comedian who is best known for his roles in Mr Bean and also the popular sitcom Blackadder. Rowan Atkinson has been voted as one of the top 50 funniest acts in British Comedy by the Observer.

Rowan Atkinson on Wikipedia
Blackadder on Wikipedia
Mr Bean on Wikipedia

Rowan Atkinson's style of comedy has been described as visual rather than dialogue that most sitcoms heavily rely upon. Atkinson has also been noted to stress certain words and over exaggerate letters. This can be seen in Blackadder where he over-exagerates the "B" in "Bob" and Mr Bean which is more visual than dialogue. It is for this reason that Rowan Atkinson has been a big success in Sitcom history.

You can expect Atkinson's performances, because of his comic style, to be visual rather than dialogue based. This style of comedy gives Atkinson an edge over other Comedians due to their form of comedy being mostly dialogue based (possibly due to the influence of the Radio).

Medal Winner

Silver this time. Great research but where is Wednesday's task? Hopefully I shall see this by Monday otherwise you may be disqualified.

Do you think radio is still important in the continued development of sitcom?

I think that radio played a major part in the development of sitcoms as we know them today and has established writers and actors within the sitcom "community". For example, John Cleese was part of the Monty Python (which originated on the Radio) is now an established comedian and is renounced for his work on the Monty Python show on the radio but also Fawlty Towers a very popular British Sitcom. However, in modern times, Sitcoms have taken on the more popular form of Television programmes. Sitcoms nowadays are rarely influenced by the Radio, due to the many benefits of watching a sitcom on the television rather than the radio. For example, Fawlty Towers, The League Of Gentlemen and Keeping Up Appearances are just some of the many popular British sitcoms that are shown on television. The popularity of Televised sitcoms is due to the advantages that television has over Radio, most noteably the fact that it is visual rather than auditory.

Radio sitcoms are still broadcasted today however. BBC 7 for example, still airs a number of radio sitcoms. For example, Doctor ar Large is an example of a radio sitcom which airs at 17:00 on BBC 7 and lasts for 30 minutes. Whilst probably not as popular as Television sitcoms, Radio sitcoms are still aired today. Radio offers different experiences to that of Television however, as with radio, you have to visualise the jokes more rather than actually watching them play out. This involves the audience more. However with Visual sitcoms, you can have more humour because you can have humourous acts that could not be seen with radio. This offers more diversity when it comes to the type of humour.