It’s Easter, lad, and our outings make cracking family viewing
The Easter break is upon us and with it comes the time to indulge in whatever takes your fancy – from binge-watching James Bond on ITVX or hoping the BBC sticks to its usual seasonal schedule with screenings of The Robe and The Greatest Story Ever Told.
ITVX has done a deal to show 25 007 movies – from Connery to Craig and though it is tempting my eye is firmly on BBC iPlayer and its collection of Wallace and Gromit – stories of the good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor and his loyal and intelligent beagle.
Wallace and Gromit is a British stop-motion animated comedy franchise created by Nick Park. The main film series consists of four short films and one feature-length film.
They are A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave, A Matter of Loaf and Death and the film Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the WereRabbit – perfect for Easter.
The series is ideal family viewing – something you can sit down and watch with mum, dad, nana, grandad and, in my case, great nephews and niece with everyone being entertained and no-one being offended.
The grown-ups can revel in the details, the puns, the references to films – ranging from Brief Encounter to Alien, The Great Escape to The Dambusters. The younger members of the family delight in the slapstick and scariness of them.
The sinister sheep rustlers of A Close Shave and the mad femme fatale of A Matter of Loaf and Death – the title a nod to another classic movie – are terrifying creations with the comedy mellowing the fright quotient.
Wallace and Gromit are the perfect double act – Wallace has all the lines but is dim. His constant refrain is: “Cracking cheese, Gromit.”
Gromit is the silent partner, has a superior mind and uses facial expressions to convey every emotion and reaction from dismay to delight, confusion to exasperation.
They live in Wigan and Wallace, voiced by Last of the Summer Wine’s Peter Sallis, has the flat vowels of a northerner.
It’s amazing what you can do with a piece of plasticine and a camera … each of the episodes are non-stop, breathless, miniepics.
The musical scores – influenced by film soundtracks created by the likes of John Williams – are genius and help elevate the episodes. Their composer Julian Nott writes “Cracking music, Gromit”.
My favourites are A Close Shave and A Matter of Loaf and Death. The former introduced Shaun the Sheep – as in the poor escapee is shorn by one of Wallace’s inventions.
A Close Shave pays homage to film noir with all the tropes of the genre. Shaun and his pals seek refuge with Wallace and Gromit who are drawn into a rustling caper masterminded by cyber-dog Preston, the pet of the owner of a wool shop – voiced by Anne Reid – who catches Wallace’s eye, and as the traits of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.
There is a prison escape, night-time car chases through narrow streets and a James Bondesque denouement before the final comic aside of Shaun the Sheep eating all the cheese.
One of the delights for older watchers is spotting the cultural references but you have to be quick as Nick Park wears his cleverness lightly. For instance, when Gromit is in jail, there is a glimpse of him in his cell reading Crime and Punishment, by Fido Dogstoyevsky – a pun on Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
A Matter of Loaf and Death is also a murder-mystery set in the world of bakers and bakeries.
It has puns and cultural references a-plenty. The BakeO-Lite girl, voiced by Sally Lindsey, is a serial killer who wants to bag a ‘baker’s dozen’ of victims and set her sights on Wallace as her 13th ‘body’.
It also features Pup Fiction – Pulp Fiction; The Dogfather – The Godfather and Where Beagles Dare – Where Eagles Dare. Gromit gains a love interest in the form of poodle Fluffles and at the end of the film, the trio drives off listening to Puppy Love performed, according to the record cover, by Doggy Osmond.
The whole 30 minutes references the advertisement for reduced-calorie Nimble Bread in which a young, slim woman took off in a hot air
It’s amazing what you can do with plasticine and a camera…each episode is a nonstop mini-epic
balloon to the tune of I Can’t Let Maggie Go by the Honeybus – which included the line: “She flies like a bird in the sky.” It ran for 10 years until 1977.
I got it – my great nephews and niece did not but all four of us devoured A Matter of Loaf and Death. Cracking viewing, Gromit.