Wallace and Gromit

From its humble beginnings in a student room to being recognised globally as a symbol of British culture, Wallace and Gromit proves it’s best to write about what you know. Keeping it simple has certainly helped this franchise as Wallace and Gromit consists of contraptions, cheese and Gromit looking disgruntled mixed with light humour.

Pulleys, slides and revolving ponds included, Wallace and Gromit are intertwined with their contraptions. The Wrong Trousers has the most use of contraptions at 9 and A Close Shave come in a close second with 8. Unfortunately for invention lovers A Grand Day Out has only 2 but they did build a rocket and fly to the moon which half makes up for it. Surprisingly A Matter of Loaf and Death has only 1 contraption and as the fourth instalment shows the franchise has lost its way slightly.

As the inventors head to the moon in search of cheese in A Grand Day Out it’s not a surprise that half of the cheese mentions are in this film at 16. It also has the largest selection of different cheese mentions at 5 of the 7 types talked about during the series. On the other hand, as Wallace and Gromit are bakers in the fourth instalment, A Matter of Loaf and Death, doesn’t include any cheese mentions whatsoever.

Fans of the series have become used to their favourite dogs disgruntled looks, but what does Gromit get most annoyed about? The answer is having a penguin flat mate in The Wrong Trousers as he looks disgruntled 6 times compared to 3 in both A Grand Day Out and A Close Shave. This means he is actually happiest as a baker with only 2 disgruntled looks. It seems adventures to the moon, washing windows and especially house shares aren’t what he considers fun.

The Wallace and Gromit shorts span 19 years and have evolved from a pet project production, where fingerprints can be seen on the models, to a powerhouse of stock-motion animation. What’s more the content has changed dramatically from its original outing as a simple adventure to the later instalments where classic crime and film noir elements have been added. In total these shorts can be watched in less than two hours so are high quality viewing for a quick moment of entertainment.