Wallace and Gromit

Thanks to the holiday generosity of relatives, our family is now enjoying the adventures of Wallace and Gromit, the cheese-and-cracker-loving man and dog duo imported from the UK. The two characters are cleverly animated, with stories appealing on two levels to both children and their parents. Parents will detect allusions to Alfred Hitchcock's films, complete with great scores composed by Julian Nott, whose music is remarkably reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann's Hitchcock scores. I had assumed the animation was computer generated, but it seems that the creators use old-fashioned methods, taking as long as six years to put together the first episode.