Creature Comforts [Animated TV Series] (2007) Reviews

The genesis of the clay-animation "docu-comedy" Creature Comforts was a 1989 theatrical short cocreated by Nick Park of "Wallace and Grommit" fame. This evolved into a British TV series, which first aired in 2003, which in turned spawned the American version four years later. The premise was both simple and sublime: the producers recorded the unscripted conversations of "real people", which were then rendered into Claymation form with anthropomorphic animals mouthing the words. The laughs grew from the bizarre juxtapositions of the "live" soundtrack and the animated image. A middle-aged couple discussing their material possessions were depicted as a pair of pigs; another couple talking about their sex lives were "reinvented" as porcupines; a woman complaining about her dry skin became a goldfish in a water tank; a lady griping about her experiences at a fitness center was animated as a hippopotamus; a brace of sweethearts reciting the traditional "She loves me, she loves me not" were drawn as a pair of monkey picking insects off one another; and so on. Produced by Aardman Animations, the American edition of Creature Comforts premiered June 4, 2007 on CBS; unfortunately, it was not nearly as successful as its British predecessor, and disappeared after only a handful of episodes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi