You know it’s Christmas when the fridge is full of cheese (a slight exaggeration, but happily, only slightly) and Aardman has decided to issue a new Wallace and Gromit. My cup, mulled or otherwise, runneth over.
We’ve got rather used to Wallace and Gromit now, but what the animators achieve, painstakingly, lovingly, is indeed a present of great proportions. Yes, they’ve done a film, but really, it’s in the half-hour special that they truly come into their own.
Flicking through the TV section in the bumper two-week listing (more on that later), I discovered that I had shared a ‘Wal and Grom’ moment with Russell T. Davies, no less (a chap also somewhat linked to Christmas, what with Dr Who specials).
It’s the moment in the second animation – the one with the dastardly penguin – when Gromit is chasing the penguin on a model railway, runs out of track, grabs the box and starts to lay new track.  I too remember that delighted ‘no!’ moment, when you don’t know what is coming next but you know that it is going to be amazing…
Part of the enjoyment is an opportunity to rediscover my inner Yorkshirewoman, and soak up all the deadpan jokes. Wallace allows us to remember how British the slightly potty inventor is - British too the elevation of pets to equal, if not greater, characters.
We’ve become used to televisual sweetmeats, TV treats at Christmas time. But amid all the reruns – and reissues of previous comedy programmes – Wallace and Gromit are, like cheeses at Christmastime, something you can always take a little more of.