Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers

Channel: BBC/ Amazon Prime

Running Time: 30 minutes

Date: 1993

Britain's only hope.

Premise: Wallace is a man, and Gromit is a beagle. But you knew that already. Apart from the beagle bit, perhaps, because I always just classified Gromit as 'dog'. This is the Oscar-winning instalment two of the Wallace and Gromit series, following the Oscar-nominated A Grand Day Out (1989). There is no prior knowledge needed to enjoy this one, however, with only the spaceship models on the wall serving as a visual reminder of continuity. They live in Wigan, but essentially it's generic Lancashire, or, for those of you from south of say, Lancashire, it's 'The North'.  Running up large debts, Wallace is forced to take in a lodger, at the same time Gromit gets some Techno-Trousers for his birthday, allowing automated walkies and vacuum-feet for walking up walls. The lodger is a sinister penguin, who drives a wedge between Gromit and Wallace - commandeering Gromit's cosy bedroom, sycophantically fetching Wallace's slippers and newspaper, and leaving his music on till the late hours, disturbing Gromit's sleep. Gromit leaves home, tearfully.

Trousers - not yet the wrong ones. 

The second act sees the melodrama turn to crime-thriller, as you probably already know, but if you don't, I'll just say 'diamond heist', 'modified helmet' (lol) and 'train chase', and you know enough. Of course, the most wonderful aspect of this film is that it was shot using stop-motion animation, which involves 24 separate frames being shot for each second of animation. An interesting comparison is that of Paw Patrol, where this ratio is reversed, and it takes one second of cerebral activity to create 24 episodes.

Before the franchise really took off, this is a reminder of the more humble origins of the duo - the convoluted inventions of Wallace extend no further than the bed-tipping machine, utilised in a perfect rule-of-three across the course of the story, whilst the final line is a perfect come-down from the chaos of the train chase: "Ooh, I do like a bit of Gorgonzola" - a resolution as perfect as "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" or HYPERLINK "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_WkyalPOEI" "Tomorrow is another day!"

The eponymous trousers: reprise.

Background: The story of The Wrong Trousers is really the story of Nick Park, the creator of the duo and director of this film. He spent seven years bringing Wallace and Gromit to the small screen in their first adventure; A Grand Day Out was only beaten by Creature Comforts to the Best Animated Short Academy Award, which was another Nick Park creation, and from the same studios: Aardman Animations. The difference between the first and second offerings are stark: A Grand Day Out is noticeably rougher around the edges - fingerprints on clay, jumpier animation - but no worse off for it. But The Wrong Trousers has the mark of a big studio, higher production values, and a bigger staff.

The original, and clearly wrong, Wallace and Gromit.

If you are familiar with the stories that Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston were originally going to play each others' roles in Friends, as were John Le Mesurier and Arthur Lowe in Dad's Army, then you'll not be shocked to hear that Wallace and Gromit similarly evolved from a rather different conception. Wallace might have been called Jerry, and had a moustache; Gromit might have been a cat, and even when he became a dog, he might have been voiced. Even the smallest factors altered integral parts of the W&G aesthetic, as Park describes: "When Peter Sallis, who voices Wallace, said "No cheeeese, Gromit" for the first time, I realised how wide and toothy I was going to have to make Wallace's mouth."

For the iconic train chase, Park explains the methodology, in a quotation worth repeating in full:

"The train chase is something I'd never seen done before in stopframe animation. None of us knew how to do it – or even if it could work. In Tom and Jerry chases, you used to get the background whizzing by and repeating itself, so we tried the same. We built a 20ft long living room wall, 2ft high, and fixed the camera to the train, and filmed on a long shutter speed so the background looked blurry. It was quite a feat."

Something to do with shutter speeds makes this frame very clever.

Quite a feat indeed, Mr Park. There is an interview with Aardman's co-founder David Sproxton where he explains this in a bit more detail - I don't understand a lot of it, but, as with everything W&G related, it is wonderful to hear passionate people talk passionately about how they make wonderful things.

It is held in such high esteem that it is one of only three films made in 1993 to get a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and came 18th in the BFI list of the best British TV programmes ever. Ever. Above The World At War, for heaven's sake.

Entertainment:  It is tempting (and accurate) to class The Wrong Trousers as the zenith of the Wallace and Gromit series; although the train chase is the headline-grabber, other aspects of the story fly under the radar: Gromit's stalking of Feathers McGraw is pitched perfectly with terrific shadow work, and music by Julian Nott (more of which anon).

The comedy is also spectacular, and largely comes about not through Peter Sallis's tour de force as the only speaking actor, but in Gromit's eyebrow work, and his occasional forlorn looks to the camera. The dismissive look he gives Wallace after he asks, innocently enough, 'how were the Techno-Trousers?', is worth an acting Oscar in itself, and working with teenagers for a living, I know all about dismissive eyebrows. The fourth wall breaking, which could jar, is nice and subtle, and makes the audience see everything through his eyes to an extent.

Eyebrows: Underrated. Unless you're a teenaged girl, in which case they are overrated.

It is, perhaps, a little bit unfair to make comparisons with mass-market, mass-production television, but I'm going to anyway. The appeal of television such as W&G is the fact that you can see the fingerprints on the plasticine, literally and metaphorically. A number of people put their heart and soul into this work, a lot of the time not even knowing how or whether it would work. A classic example of a group of people working for the love of their craft rather than for money or prestige, but ending up with a stonking great pile of both anyway.

Nick Park with animator Steve Box: tiny men with normal-sized bow ties.

Ratings:

Sex: The first two episodes of W&G are short on romance, which is possibly why they work a little better than the subsequent two. Although it's nice to see that Gromit isn't entirely disinterested in the charming Fluffles in A Matter of Loaf and Death, it's a bit weird, and I don't think anyone's favourite part of A Close Shave was Wendoline. So, aside from Wallace's spotty boxer shorts, nothing to see here. (1/10)

Music: A massive triumph. The theme is one of the most uplifting sounds in existence, and the fact that my two-year old sings it is a massive bonus. You can access the full suite here, and the main theme is familiar to everyone, but the train chase is a masterpiece from start to finish.  Julian Nott returns to add to his work from A Grand Day Out, and it seems a bit of a shame that he is not more of a household name. He shouldn't be short of a few bob, though, having penned the massively successful Peppa Pig theme, too. (10/10)

Plausibility: Part of the reason W&G resonate so much with viewers is their ordinariness, rather than their extraordinariness. Cheese, tea, knitting, tinkering: these are some of the most 'British' signifiers you can mention before you start sounding like a Nigel Farage stream-of-consciousness (this blog is assuming Wallace voted for Brexit, Gromit to Remain). Although the plot itself is quite dramatic, there is a pleasingly nostalgic feel to the exterior shots - red-brick terraces, old metal dustbins and such - and the familiarity of Peter Sallis's voice from decades of The Last of the Summer Wine adds a comforting reassurance. Pleasingly high levels of verisimilitude for a show with an anthropomorphic dog and penguin. (6/10)

Education: Tricky. Objectively, there is actually the worrying lesson that you are right to be suspicious of shadowy strangers entering your neighbourhood, and you half expect Wallace and Gromit to turn to the camera at the end and say "No more 'lodgers'! They're more trouble than they're worth! Vote UKIP."

'Lodgers': more trouble than they're worth.

As for the Rube-Goldberg machine - Wallace's alarm clock bed is taken to extreme and unnecessary elaboration in A Close Shave and A Matter of Loaf and Death - but you only need to look at this guy to see that there are always people in this world who are going to be inspired to be as silly as possible for the minimum pay-off. (6/10)

A prototype from the Cameron government to try and prise benefits claimants from their beds.

Overall: Literally no-one dislikes Wallace and Gromit, and in these uncertain and volatile times, they are as dependable and comforting as a mug of tea, shards of Cadbury's Easter Egg chocolate, a hot water bottle, and a duvet, rolled into one (not literally of course; you'll make a big mess). Quite simply, one of the cultural triumphs of the whole of the 20th century, and that century included the Naked Gun trilogy. Seriously though, it's perfect. (10/10)

Paw Patrol

Channel: Channel 5/ Nickelodeon

Running Time: 12 mins

Date: 2013 - present

Start with the toy, and work backwards to get a TV show

Premise: A ten-year old boy has somehow been put in charge of a municipal emergency services operation, and his employees work for dog biscuits (and a company vehicle). Every episode, a minor or major catastrophe (“no job’s too big, no pup’s too small!” as the theme tune has it) occurs, and the pups save the day. Eerily, this it is the kind of setup that you could imagine ham-faced coward (and former Prime Minister) David Cameron advocating as part of his ‘Big Society’ brainwave, where public services are underfunded to the extent that a primary school kid and some pre-pubescent canines have replaced the police, fire and ambulance service.  

The ten year old is Ryder, and his pups are Marshall, Rocky, Zuma, Chase, Rubble, and Skye (named after the island off the coast of Scotland, which is where you’ll want to run away to each time your little one asks to watch Paw Patrol). Each pup has a specialised vehicle and modus operandi, for example, Chase has the characteristics of a police dog, Marshall is a firedog and medic, and Skye is in charge of flying in a pink helicopter and giggling, because gender stereotypes. Rocky appears to have drawn the short straw - like the kid whose superpower was ‘heart’ in Captain Planet - and is in charge of ‘recycling’, which I’m all for, but maybe not as part of the emergency services. Then again, looking at the state of the oceans, perhaps it should be.

Each time there is a crisis, Ryder gets a video call on his phablet, summons the pups to headquarters, and outlines the situation to them, with the same kind of flat, monotonous tone that Britain has become used to with Theresa May’s takeover from Ham Man. Then the pups slide down into their individualised vehicles, which have been designed expertly to sell toys deal with various emergencies, and off they go. Imagine Thunderbirds, but designed for an era where two-year olds are routinely having decayed teeth removed under surgery, children can’t grip pens properly because their hands don’t have the strength to do anything other than tap touchscreens, and OH GOD JUST MAKE IT ALL STOP.

Background: In the past, TV shows such as Thunderbirds, or films like Toy Story made a huge amount of money from merchandising. And that’s OK, given that it rarely compromised the integrity of the stories themselves. Well, it’s time to give capitalism another big pat on the back, as Paw Patrol sees this concept work in reverse. The Canadian toy and entertainment company Spin Master had a prototype transforming toy that they wanted to make some more Canadian dollars out of, and other currencies as well, ideally. They approached the British producer Keith Chapman (Bob the Builder) and asked him to invent a franchise out of this toy. And thus, from one of Chapman’s concepts, Paw Patrol was developed by toy designers (do you spot the theme emerging?)

WHY IS SHE NOT WEARING A HELMET?

Nickelodeon announced it had picked up the franchise at the 2013 Licensing Expo in Las Vegas; the words ‘franchise’, ‘Las Vegas’ and ‘Nickelodeon’ being three of the worst things ever to be associated with children’s television, or humanity in general.

But wait! Here’s a line from a 2016 interview with Ben Gadbois, global president of Spin Master, which will curdle your very soul: “We’re continuing to invest in keeping the Paw Patrol content fresh, with new characters and themes in order to increase the longevity of the franchise.”

The tenth circle of hell that Dante didn't have time to include

It is hard to like Paw Patrol; it is harder to like it when you learn that essentially it is designed explicitly to sell toys as its primary function, rather than a happy sideline. Canada has given the world a lot of wonderful people - Mike Myers, Michael J. Fox, and Ellen Page among them - but Paw Patrol very much has to sit in the same row as Bryan Adams and Celine Dion.

Canada: Not as innocent as it seems

Entertainment: There is a huge amount to dislike, from the beginning title sequence to the end credit sequence, to the moment you realise you’ve had the theme tune in your head all week. The animation is sickly-smooth, but lacking any real heart; it resembles the graphics on a bad smartphone game, and leaves you contemplating the futility of existence in much the same way. Animation can thrive on its complexity (Wallace and Gromit) or its simplicity (Hey Duggee!) and Paw Patrol fits neither category.

The voice acting is dubbed for British audiences, and although it might be a cheap shot to have a go at child actors, it must be said that there is a woodenness to the delivery, extremely ironic given the amount of plastic that will be going into all those toys. The scripts mirror the animation in that they too sorely lack any heart - no one individual at any level really seems to ‘own’ Paw Patrol in the way that the Andersons did with Thunderbirds, so no-one cares that everything is geared towards shifting units at the expense of literally everything else.

In terms of plot lines, early episodes deal with stock animal rescue scenarios usually seen in Octonauts - saving a beached whale, saving some turtles, etc, quickly followed by the extraordinarily contrived - the pups fix a train line so a new version of a computer dance game will get through on time. Season Two sees the exact storyline pitched by the LA pigeons in Bolt - “aliens!” which should have pointed to the shark very much being jumped, and by season 4 we have occasional character Tracker dreaming that the rival mayor to Adventure Bay’s Mayor Goodway (keep up) has become a baby; I have not been able to clarify if David Lynch was guest director on that one.

The most worrying thing about this all is that children absolutely adore it. My own two-year old, otherwise a highly intelligent child, not only requests it with the kind of euphoric glee I reserve for a night in with a tub of hummus and a big bag of Kettle Chips, but requests the same three episodes over and over again. Today he hid in a box and said he was talking to Marshall. Somehow some Paw Patrol pants have worked their way into his chest of drawers. It’s like the film The Blob, only the Blob was supposedly a metaphor for communism, whilst Paw Patrol is being smacked over and over again in the face by rampant consumerism, if rampant consumerism came in the shape of a baseball bat with nails driven through. Which it does.

Paw Patrol is taking over your house; you'll wish you were as happy as that woman.

Ratings:

Sex: Although extensive breeding processes must have taken place in order to get to this stage, no obvious romantic sub-plots are evident. Ryder has a friend called Katie, who, as another ten year old, has been deemed qualified enough to run the local pet clinic, but it’s all very platonic and dull. None of the male dogs seems keen to take a run at Skye, which suggests that Katie maybe dealt with these pups a little while ago on a professional basis, and would account for all the unbroken voices.

Music: Upon listening to the theme, your initial reaction is, ‘my god, Sum 41 have fallen on hard times’. And upon googling Sum 41, you’ll see that they’re also Canadian (move up Bryan, Celine), and wonder whether there’s something in your initial thesis. But ultimately, no, the pop-punk sound has been taken, sanitised and turned into a powerfully catchy ditty by a group with the most obvious of names: Voodoo Highway Music & Post. The most irritating aspect is that you are led to believe that one of the dogs is called ‘Yeah!’ as the roll call elapses: “Marshall! Rubble! Chase! Rocky! Zuma! Skye! Yeah! They’re on their way…” Deal with the profound earworm by listening to Blink 182 again - the best example of a now-corrupted genre. (3/10)

Plausibility: Talking dogs who act as the emergency services, a ten-year old in charge, and a large urban area with no visible litter - you have come to the wrong place for verisimilitude. However, the fact that only one of the six pups is female does mirror current gender inequalities, so that’s very 2018. The most prominent female in a position of power, Mayor Goodway, is a ridiculous caricature of a ditzy, bumbling woman with a successful career in public service, much like the Daily Mail imagines Diane Abbott (or all women with jobs) to act - so is this plausible in terms of the representation of attitudes to women in politics, rather than the reality (which it obviously isn't)? I'll get my Sixth-Formers onto the case after the holidays. 

Popular representation of women in politics, 2018

Overall, the fact that the whole show is being played for the merchandising very much fits current trends of much of modern life being too painful to contemplate. (4/10)

Education: Tricky to place. Children won’t really learn much about the realities of the emergency services or local government, or how to ensure a gender balance in children’s TV, but in conversations with parents and caregivers they should be able to grasp concepts like ‘saturation point’ and ‘shareholder dividend’, so it’s swings and roundabouts really. (2/10)

Overall: What children’s TV would look like if Rupert Murdoch - a man so terrible, Dennis Potter named his cancer tumour after him - got his hands on it. Love and cherish the BBC, pay your licence fee, and don’t feel too bad about Toys ‘R’ Us closing down, because the toy companies are coming after your wallets, and your souls. (1/10)

Peppa Pig

Channel: Channel 5/ Nick Jr

Running Time: 5 mins (ish)

Date: 2004 - present

I have the most amazing pulled pork recipe, if anyone's interested. 

Premise:
***WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS PUNS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN PASSED COMPLETELY SAFE FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION***

Peppa is a young, animated, anthropomorphic pig who lives in a house with her mother and father, and her infant brother George. They live in a house at the top of an unrealistically steep hill, and have adventures of the sort that are kind of low-key in the same way as Bing, but without the downright-weird Flop element (If that sentence confuses you, head here).

Peppa and her family talk in English, but incorporate little snorts here and there to remind you that they’re actually pigs, unless you’d forgotten. They visit their grandparents, jump in puddles, ride bikes, go to the shops, pour-cups of tea, and generally live an idyllic piggy life (but if George goes missing, Peppa will do anything to get the baby back - and shoulder the blame herself). The sense of humour is pretty obvious; there are plenty of voice actors willing to ham it up. On the hoof, sometimes. You know, ad hock.

They are friends with other groups of animals, such as the rabbits, the dogs, the ponies, the zebras - the kinds of animals you see out and about everyday anyway. But what do you care? S’nowt to do with you. The original premise had most episodes set at their beach house near Copenhagen, but unfortunately they were duped by property scammers, and the incident was popularly known as the Danish Bay Con (I’ll stop now, but you’d have loved my reference to the numerous copies of A Doll’s House they have lying around the place. Oh, go on then. The spare-Ibsen).

Henrik Ibsen: clearly a fan of chops. It is unclear how he felt about his name being used for third-rate puns. 

Peppa and her family appear live a life beyond free-range; despite this, their diet - especially Daddy Pig’s - is very unhealthy, and could invalidate any future claims that the future Peppacorn Sausages Range are organic.

Background: With their first foray into children’s television, The Big Knights, disappointingly treated by the BBC, the trio of friends Phil Davies, Mark Astley and Neville Astley said they would, in future, seek other outlets for their work. And this is why Peppa Pig isn’t a CBeebies programme, as it feels like it should be. Funded in part by Nick Jr and a lot by themselves, it appears that our three musketeers were very confident in themselves that they were on to a winner. Even though it seems ridiculous to look back on, back in the early part of the century a lot of children’s TV was dominated by male characters - Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam, Postman Pat. The idea of a female lead was a bit of a novel one. Our trio also knew that the way to big money was through the spin-offs and the merch - not the show itself. However, this extremely thorough and very interesting article from the FT in 2010, cite the 3 millionth DVD sale in that year - “at £10 a DVD, that’s quite a lot”, says Phil Davies, freshly returned from three months in the Maldives at that point, where clearly he had spent time brushing up on his maths. Although I’m personally not a massive fan of ostentatious wealth (unless it’s mine), these three gents seem to have taken an enormous risk with their own money, succeeded massively, and managed not to do it by selling arms or vlogging, and that is worth a lot of respect.

Co-creator Phil Davies describes himself as owning "a fancy car". See if you can guess how he affords it. 

For a seemingly innocuous programme, Peppa Pig really has caused a lot of controversy over the years. Peppa was a promotional figure for the Sure Start programme launched by the 1997-2010 Labour government, and confirmed that she would not be attending the launch of the party’s 2010 families manifesto ‘in the interests of avoiding any controversy or misunderstanding’, just in case anyone was more likely to vote for (or against) Labour on the basis that a fictional pig was in a photo op.

There were complaints, and subsequent retrospective animation, to include seat belts to the characters whilst in transit, which had been missed off as an oversight on the first couple of series, as were bicycle helmets. And, in 2012, the episode ‘Mr Skinnylegs’ was banned from broadcast in Australia after complaints were received about the sentiment that ‘spiders were not to be feared’.

(Hopefully) not an Australian spider. 

The most bizzare of these sideshows, and most open to deliberate misinterpretation by The Daily Mail click-bait hacks occured when Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat leadership hopeful (four words which are increasingly funny when seen together in the same sentence), stated that children’s TV should include homosexual characters, as it was representative of modern society, and to exclude gay characters from children’s TV would suggest there is a limit to gay rights. When asked if there should be gay characters on Peppa Pig, he said it should not be “out of bounds… which it appears to be at the moment”. Of course, this was twisted deliberately by the tabloids, not least in the Mail headline “It’s time for a LESBIAN Peppa Pig”, which is not at all what Lamb was saying, but hey, clicks.

Entertainment: A strong one from both parent and child perspectives. The voice acting - particularly from Daddy Pig (Richard Ridings) and the narrator (John Sparkes) stand out as charming and earnest, and the children are not bad either. The stories never achieve the levels of tweeness and saccharine that Bing and Topsy and Tim aspire to - there is a sense of fun embedded in each episode, and ‘learning’ is thankfully given a back seat (in a seat belt, one hopes) to the silliness, tomfoolery, and downright nincompoopery of the script. The episodes are nice and bitesize for our toddler, and one blends into the other quite seamlessly for a good Amazon Prime bingewatch.

Ratings:

Sex: Given that a typical litter of (domesticated) pigs ranges from 5-25 piglets (averaging 10-12), it appears that Mummy and Daddy Pig either ate all the other pigs in each litter that produced Peppa and George, or Daddy Pig’s much commented-upon obesity has affected his fertility, his sex drive, or both. (1/10)

Music: The theme tune is catchy without being too intrusive; there is a nice, brassy, oompah-oompah feel to it, which is tonally consistent with the rest of the show. Although I’ve heard numerous complaints about earworm, this is much less annoying than Raa-Raa. (7/10)

Plausibility: Many obstacles here, the pig thing being the most obvious. Although the steepness of the hill upon which Peppa’s house is built is an obvious starting point for pedants, it should be noted that a) Daddy Pig works as a architectural engineer and should know his stuff, b) the structural integrity of the house has (as of writing) yet to be featured in the plot, and c) the writers wanted it that way, to match the way in which children draw their own houses. And, more importantly, Mark Baker notes: “Well, it’s just that having a huge hill like that is so funny. And ridiculous – that every time Peppa and George run out to play, they have to run down this very, very steep hill. It is optimistic, and fun.” An optimistically steep hill. There you go. (5/10)

House/ pigs not drawn to scale. 

Education: Some important messages about family unity and inter-sibling co-operation are established early, and maintained throughout. Children are certainly not being stretched in terms of how different kinds of families are presented - this setup is strictly nuclear and traditional. Whilst this is fine on its own terms, it will be interesting to see when children’s - especially pre-schoolers’ - television presents a non-traditional family unit and doesn’t make a big deal about it.

Daddy Pig is perhaps the true hero of the show in that he never lets embarrassment or failure get in the way of his cheery demeanour, which is a good lesson for adults, if not the target audience. (8/10)

Overall: A triumph of pre-school schedules - this is not quite in the same vein as the all-time classics of Teletubbies, In The Night Garden and Thomas the Tank Engine, but I reckon if you ask a five year old they’d likely disagree. Peppa isn’t going anywhere soon, unless there is a nuclear holocaust, in which case her isolated, unsheltered hill-top dwelling is likely to be among the first casualties of the blast. I found Peppa the more charming the more I wrote about her, and even though I’d eat a chorizo sausage made out of her, I’d feel slightly sad about it.

Well worth including as part of a diverse televisual portfolio. (8/10).

Catch up on any missed blogs here, including The Furchester Hotel, Bing, In the Night Garden, Teletubbies, and Postman Pat SDS.