A Close Shave

Nick Park's A Close Shave won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Short in 1996, becoming the third Wallace and Gromit short — after The Wrong Trousers the previous year — to take both prizes. The film cemented Aardman Animations as the most internationally recognised stop-motion studio of its era, and the Wallace-and-Gromit relationship as the rare British comedy partnership that translated effortlessly into every market.

Wallace, the inventor-cheese-fanatic of the Wallace-and-Gromit duo, falls in love with Wendolene Ramsbottom, a quietly furtive wool-shop owner with a violent dog called Preston, just as a spate of sheep-disappearances begins to trouble their Yorkshire town. Gromit, as ever, does the actual investigative and emotional work while Wallace pursues romantic distraction. Shaun the Sheep — the future star of his own franchise — makes his first appearance.

Park's stop-motion craft, the writing partnership with Bob Baker, and the studio collaboration with composer Julian Nott produced one of the most beloved British shorts of the 1990s. Aardman went on to Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (the feature-length Oscar winner) and the continuing Shaun the Sheep franchise; A Close Shave remains the moment the studio reached its full mature expression.