SHAUN the Sheep’s plan for world domination continues. Not content with a TV series, stage show and video game, the sheepish superstar is to get his own feature film. StudioCanal is teaming up with Aardman Animations to produce the movie debut of Shaun the Sheep.
He won an Oscar in his debut – to be strictly accurate, he only had a minor role in the awardwinning short A Close Shave – and earned his own TV series.
The world’s most famous sheep (eat your heart out Dolly) and his flock have delighted TV audiences in more than 170 countries with the series called (what else?) Shaun the Sheep.
Shaun’s film will be shot in Aardman’s trademark style of stop-motion animation and is written and directed by Richard Starzak (aka Golly) and Mark Burton.
As for the plot, it goes something like this: when Shaun’s mischief inadvertently leads to the farmer being taken away from the farm, Shaun, Bitzer and the flock have to go into the big city to rescue him, setting the stage for an epic adventure.
Shaun the Sheep first aired in the UK on CBBC in March 2007 and inspired the spin-off show, Timmy Time, aimed at younger viewers. The show has been broadcast in 180 countries.
Since Wallace and Gromit’s third short feature, A Close Shave, Shaun has made a brief cameo appearance with the duo in one of the episodes (Shopper 13) of Wallace and Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions web series of shorts.
CHANNEL 4 Factual Entertainment has re-commissioned three primetime series following successful first runs in 2012 – Heston’s Fantastical Food, Kevin McCloud: Man Made Home and Gadget Man.
Heston’s Fantastical Food will focus on dishes that built Britain and will have a mix of history, great British heritage, science and fantasy, which he incorporates into his dishes.
Each week, he’ll take a different iconic British dish, deconstruct it and then rebuild it to be as glorious as possible. Each creation will then be served as an extraordinary eating experience for different communities around the UK.
There will be a wealth of social history through food in each episode as Heston unlocks fascinating food secrets, horrible histories and cooking techniques that gave us some of our modern-day favourites, ranging from ploughman’s lunch and afternoon tea to roast beef dinner. The series will air later this year.
Gadget Man returns for its second series, this time presented by actor, director and comedian Richard Ayoade. He’ll lead the viewer on a series of adventures, incorporating the latest in consumer products, cuttingedge innovative technology and even creating and designing his own fantasy contraptions. Ayoade says: “I’m delighted to bring my nasal, hesitant and underwhelming delivery to a formerly successful format.”
Having successfully crafted an incredible cabin in the woods with his own bare hands, Kevin McCloud is back for his next marvellous Man Made challenge, testing a basic hypothesis – is simple better? Is creating better than consuming? This time he’s attempting to build his very own beach getaway on the English coast.
Over four episodes in the autumn, viewers will see him turn modern-day Robinson Crusoe to battle the elements, uncover amazing building materials in remarkable places, and experiment with novel offgrid energy sources. All so he can sit out on his porch as the sun goes down, listen to the sound of the crashing waves and sip a cocktail made from his own home-made rum.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here