57th Street

Wallace and Gromit fans have likely gone into hibernation since the release of “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” in 2005. Like them, I recently got itchy for some news and started to poke around. That’swhere I found out about Aardman Animation’s new hit children’s show, “Shaun The Sheep.” Fans will remember Shaun as the mute, besweatered sheep from the Wallace and Gromit short-ish film “A Close Shave.” He’s since moved on to greener pastures, in a quite literal sense.

The premise of “Shaun the Sheep,” is simple. Shaun lives on a rural European farm, complete with dry stone buildings, with the other sheep in The Flock. Their keeper, The Farmer, lives in ignorance of the fact that Shaun and his friends behave quite like humans — lounging, ordering pizza, playing soccer (sorry, “football”), and getting into mischief. The episodes are completely self-contained stories that operate under one basic rule: that The Farmer can never know about what his animals are getting up to behind his back.

While the premise seems fairly boiler plate the show has a lot of unique features which separate from the flock of mediocrity which is children’s programming. First off, it is done with all of Aardman’s standards for quality in animation. There’s not many cartoons animated with stop motion animation (robot chicken and the excellent Pingu spring to mind) and the look is quite refreshing. The show looks fantastic, and as a result is more satisfying to watch.

It’s also completely silent, at least in terms of intelligible words. The Farmer often grumbles, Bitzer, the sheepdog, barks, and the sheep bleat. This allows the show to neatly side-step that fatal pitfall of children’s entertainment: insipid dialog. The show looses nothing from the lack of dialog, it’s fun to let the faces and exasperated bleats of sheep say what words simply can’t convey. (It also means that it is easily transferable, and is currently running in 73 countries — from Iceland to India.)

The quality of animation in the show, coupled with the cleverness of silent comedy makes for a terrific fusion in Shaun The Sheep. Like a haiku, the restrictions of the show — seven-minute episodes, no dialog, etc. — seem to have created fertile creative ground in which the show has flourished. At times it can be witty and clever, and other times juvenile and silly, but at no time does it ever stop being entertaining. It has become the highest form of children’s entertainment: one that adults aren’t ashamed to watch, and might even enjoy.

Bright, light, and utterly charming, Shaun the Sheep is the kind of show that everyone, regardless of age or nationality, simply must see.

Unfortunately, the powers that be have seen fit to remove all the episodes of the show from YouTube — which is most unfortunate for anyone in North America. Thankfully, there are some clips available from Shaunthehseep.com, though they are woefully truncated. A good ol’ Google Video should turn up a few more.

Watch Shaun The Sheep At MetaCafe