Nowadays, everything is way over produced. CGI and other drastic post-production edits seem to occur with every TV show or film out. The love and care and craft that goes into making films and TV shows seems to have all but evaporated. There is one company, and one man in particular, whose aim is to keep the traditional craft in creating a TV show alive.

That man is this man.



His name is Nick Park, a 50 year old animator from Preston in Lancashire, England. His works include Creature Comforts (the British and American versions) Chicken Run and, most famously, the Wallace & Gromit series. Now, I've loved the Wallace & Gromit series of short films ever since I was a small boy. Why? Because they just seemed to homemade, which they were.

Each model was handcrafted out of clay and then stop-motion was used to animate these lumps of clay which seem to have more life in them than a number of Hollywood stars these days. The finer details, such as still being able to see the fingerprints on the clay in the films, make it seem rough around the edges but with so much character to it.

This is why I almost collapsed with excitement when I found out that today, Christmas Day, a new short Wallace & Gromit film was to be aired on BBC One.

And it was fantastic.



The story, in summary, is that Wallace & Gromit set up a succesfull bakery when a series of murders starts occuring in the local area, primarily of bakers. As this news appears, so does a woman for which Wallace falls in love with. The way the story pans out is a sort of faux-murder mystery esque pantomime.
The jokes are subtley funny, as they always have been, as well as a particular favourite showing the rivalry between Nick Park's home county, Lancashire, and my home county, Yorkshire.

It really was a fantastic 30 minutes and proof that proper, decent television is still around and is being made.

So, to Nick Park, I salute you for making my Christmas that bit more awesome and I suggest anyone remotely interested should try and dig it up to watch.