(courtesy Radio Times)
What a delight!
Shaun the Sheep has joined Gromit, of legendary Wallace and Gromit fame, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Close Shave which saw Shaun enter the home of perhaps Aardman Animation’s most well-known creations, and devour everything in sight!
The third instalment in the Wallace & Gromit series – it followed A Grand Day Out (1989) and The Wrong Trousers (1993) – A Close Shave was yet another claymation triumph for creator Nick Park and so it seems only fitting that Gromit and Shaun find their way on the Christmas cover of Radio Times, a weekly magazine listing all the TV and radio programming, which began way back in September 1923.
Not only is the cover there to celebrate a major Aardman Animations’ anniversary but to promote some big things in the pipeline for the studio.
It’s a busy time for Aardman Animations. There’s a Christmas Day episode of Shaun the Sheep on BBC One called Fleece Navidad, and in 2026, to mark the studio’s 50th anniversary, a big Aardman exhibition at London’s Young V&A, plus a film outing for Shaun, The Beast of Mossy Bottom. (Radio Times)
There’s also a great interview with Nick Park himself on the future of Aardman Animations and musings on how wonderful it is for his characters to have such a long and illustrious history with Radio Times.