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The debut of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl on Netflix internationally — the movie premiered on the BBC over the holiday period for those lucky blighters in the UK — is, of course, something to be celebrated. After all, by this point in time, everyone has come to accept that Wallace & Gromit projects are cracking little movies filled to the brim with jokes, thrills, and an attention to detail that most live-action movies could only dream of coming close to. What I’d like to suggest, however, is that they’re not alone in their craft, care, and overall quality. For your consideration, dear readers: the rest of the Aardman Animations catalog.

This is For Your Consideration, in which we try to come to terms with the inescapable fact that, honestly, there’s too much out there to have time to watch, read, or hear everything — by making some suggestions about things that you might have overlooked but would enjoy, anyway. Think of it as recommendations from a well-meaning friend.

Before X-Men: The Animated Series, there was another (better) Morph

For most people, Aardman Animations is known at best as the company behind Wallace & Gromit, or perhaps 2000’s Chicken Run — another stop motion animated classic that pairs action adventure tropes with comedy, as well as the vocal stylings of Jane Horrocks, Absolutely Fabulous’ Julia Sawalha, and unfortunately Mel Gibson. The studio’s start actually came more than a decade before the world first met Gromit in 1989’s A Grand Day Out, however, and generations of British kids have been appreciating the earliest fruits of the company’s labor ever since.

The first breakout character Aardman created was Morph, a featureless clay man who could (and would) shape change into whatever the situation demanded of him; he’d talk in nonsense noises and get in arguments with his similarly wordless rival Chas. It might sound like an overly simple formula, but Morph proved to be an exceptionally long-lived success — following his 1977 debut in kids’ art show Take Hart, he’d continue to be a presence on television in the UK almost continually through 2006 in a variety of different series. (He’d later be resurrected in 2014 for a series that’s ongoing to this day.)

Creature Comforts, the vox that pops around the world (and won an Oscar)

As if Wallace & Gromit wasn’t enough of an animation legacy to leave, the characters’ creator Nick Park came up with another all-time classic just one year after A Grand Day Out premiered. Creature Comforts took pre-existing interview audio about people talking about their homes and created new animation for it, transforming it into zoo animals talking about their enclosures and day-to-day existence… and winning an Academy Award for it, to boot.

The success of the first short would eventually lead to a full series in the UK, and then a US version years later, which aired in Animal Planet of all places. In 2024, a sequel series titled Things We Love began airing in the UK.

Beyond Wallace & Gromit, other adventures!

The success of the Wallace & Gromit shorts (and eventual full-length productions) pushed Aardman to a place where the studio could start thinking bigger, working on full feature films with a number of American studios. These vary in quality from the enjoyable-but-maybe-never-going-to-rewatch (2006’s Flushed Away, 2023’s Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget) to at least a couple of underrated hall of fame watches that should be celebrated by animation and movie fans the world over. 2011’s Arthur Christmas is, due to timing, perhaps one to gloss over for now, but anyone with 90 minutes to spare and joy in their heart needs to make time to check out 2012’s The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! as soon as humanly possible.

Adapted from the book of the same name by Gideon Defoe — the book’s author — The Pirates! is a gloriously silly movie that is, impressively, very smart in how silly it’s going to be. With a voice cast that includes Hugh Grant, David Tennant, Salma Hayek, and Martin Freeman, the whole thing is like watching history reinterpreted by the Muppets as related via a particularly unreliable narrator. For anyone who feels as if half of the joy of Wallace & Gromit movies is that they’re just great comedy movies that happen to be done as stop motion animation, might I present something that just could become your new favorite thing.

The Watchlist (Shortlist)

For your consideration, here’s the Aardman Animation projects to check out if you’re pressed for time.

• Morph (1977-)
• Creature Comforts (1989)
• The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)

The Watchlist (Extended edition)

If you’re looking to invest more of your time, here’s a longer Aardman list to work through:

• Morph (1977-)
• Creature Comforts (1989)
• Rex the Runt (1998-2001)
• Chicken Run (2000)
• The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)
• Shaun the Sheep: The Movie (2015)
• Early Man (2018)

Happy viewing! But, you know, watch Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl first. Feathers McGraw demands it, after all.

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