Ian Simmons launched Kicking the Seat in 2009, one week after seeing Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia. His wife proposed blogging as a healthier outlet for his anger than red-faced, twenty-minute tirades (Ian is no longer allowed to drive home from the movies).
The Kicking the Seat Podcast followed three years later and, despite its “undiscovered gem” status, Ian thoroughly enjoys hosting film critic discussions, creating themed shows, and interviewing such luminaries as Gaspar Noé, Rachel Brosnahan, Amy Seimetz, and Richard Dreyfuss.
Ian is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. He also has a family, a day job, and conflicted feelings about referring to himself in the third person.
And it worked. Brilliantly. For a Georgian audience, slapstick is universal—falling out of a car, getting a turkey stuck on your head, ruining a royal painting. But the dubbed version added a layer of intimacy .
The Georgian voice actor (often credited as the legendary or similar studio talents from the era) didn’t just translate words. He translated attitude . He turned Bean into a slightly more cunning, more vocal, and somehow even stranger character.
In the Georgian dubbing (specifically the version aired on the Rustavi 2 channel in the late 1990s), the narrator/translator speaks over the original audio, translating every single word, sound, and thought. But because the original Mr. Bean barely talks, the Georgian translator had to invent dialogue. mr bean qartulad
(Laugh at Mr. Bean – in Georgian!) Did you grow up watching the Georgian Mr. Bean? Share your favorite dubbed moment in the comments below!
Suddenly, Bean’s silent glances became sarcastic comments. His internal panic became a whispered monologue in Georgian. His interactions with the blue Reliant Robin came with running commentary. And it worked
Some episodes have been re-dubbed in later years, but the true fans hunt for the "old dubbing"—the one with the slightly muffled audio, the over-the-top translations, and the voice that feels less like a narrator and more like Bean’s secret inner Georgian twin. Mr. Bean Qartulad is more than just a translation. It’s a cultural artifact. It shows how a country took a global icon and made him local—not by changing his face, but by giving him a voice.
So next time you watch Mr. Bean put his head in a turkey or paint a bomb-diffusing card, imagine him muttering in Georgian. You might just laugh harder. But the dubbed version added a layer of intimacy
If you grew up in Georgia in the late 90s or early 2000s, there’s a good chance you know Rowan Atkinson not as a sophisticated Oxford graduate, but as a strange, tweed-jacketed man who talks to his teddy bear and falls asleep in church.