I watched them one a day during the week, including the movie. And they’re still great.
A Grand Day Out is really a completely different animal to the others. It doesn’t really have a story, it’s just a fun adventure. They weren’t fully fleshed out characters as such here. You couldn’t imagine them going to the moon without breathing equipment nowadays. Interesting thing about this is that the original plan was for Gromit to speak, and be voiced by Peter Hawkins (Jimbo & The Jet Set, The Family Ness, and I also know him from Dave Allen sketches), but then they decided/realised that his expressions said everything for him. And that was truly a masterstroke. You just can’t imagine Gromit speaking nowadays, it would just be wrong!
The Wrong Trousers is probably still the most famous of these adventures (with the possible exception of the movie, although that may simply be because it was feature length). It’s also still my favourite (although my favourite moment from the whole series is in the movie). Instead of just being a bit of fun, this one has a proper story. We get to see everything established - setup and payoff with all details in the right place. The characters are much more fleshed out now, and have real feelings. That’s what sets this apart from your average run-of-the-mill clay animation, and what A Grand Day Out failed to do. We see the characters’ minds at work, the penguin (or “chicken” on the wanted poster) knows what he’s about, and first sets about alienating Gromit, and once he’s out of the picture, makes Wallace and the techno-trousers instrumental in his plans. The “wake up and get dressed” sequence owes a lot to the launch sequences in Thunderbirds - as indeed do the equivalent sequences in the later adventures, which get more elaborate as time goes by. The chase sequence with the model railway - even that was established right at the beginning! - is indeed well done. There is a lot of action in it, and my favourite bit is when Gromit starts putting down the spare track at high speed to save them from crashing.
A Close Shave takes the franchise a little further - most notably by adding an extra name to the cast, Anne Reid as Wendolene, who also has a dog, albeit a robot one. This is a clever adventure because you know there’s something bad going on, but you’re not quite sure how good or bad Wendolene is, you keep changing your mind as the story unfolds. This adventure is also notable, as Mark said, for introducing Shaun The Sheep, who got his own spinoff show on CBBC, albeit over a decade later. There’s plenty of action in this one, and it was inevitable that Nick Park would then go on to make a feature length adventure . . . but that’s on the Movie Club thread!
A Matter Of Loaf And Death is unquestionably the darkest of these shorts, we have a very specific, very deliberate murder plot, courtesy of Piella Bakewell, who bears a grudge against bakers. Actually, when I watched it last week, it struck me that one story I wrote a few years later was probably influenced by this, and also A Close Shave, albeit subconsciously. And this show features two actual characters meeting their end through very unnatural causes, one at the start, one at the climax. Once again, the villain recognises Gromit as a threat, and seeks to alienate him from his owner.
There will almost certainly be no new adventures featuring the duo, since Peter Sallis, the actor who voiced Wallace in all of these stories, passed away earlier this month. But in spite of that - and the fact that there have been so few features with these characters, Wallace & Gromit have, over the last quarter of a century, become a national institution. And rightly so.
