E Canuck

I've always been a big fan of the Nick Park films and Wallace and Gromit particularly. This one felt a bit like a corporate rehash: just dust off the old ideas and take everyone through the same hoops.

I began to feel a little irritated on Gromit's behalf that Wallace continues to make some of his old mistakes and to put Gromit into such a bad position doing so.

I enjoyed some of the animation, particularly textures of the stop-motion scenery and set dressing. Overall, though, I kept waiting for the old magic to surface and for me, it simply didn't arrive.

W&G is, perhaps, a victim of its own success, and the filmmakers feel their fans will show up even if there's an uninspired offering.

I was finding the writing intriguing and different in the first few episodes of season 1 but found the quality quickly began to taper off. By the time I hit the S1 Episode 6, I've decided not to keep watching. That episode was just gross, disgusting and had no surprises to justify the unpleasant content.

Episodes 4 and 5 also didn't really offer anything novel and it felt like they were reaching to try to come up with some kind of a twist, part of the series formula, I guess (besides the nominal No.9 appearing on doorways at the beginning of each episode.)

If you have nothing better to do with your time, try watching but I'd suggest bailing if a particular episode just doesn't do anything for you.

I'm thankful to Acorn TV in Canada for the range of excellent Australian series I've enjoyed in the past several years, this being the most recent, just finished tonight (Oct. 2024.)

At times I thought this was going to get stuck in stereotypes and the romance aspect wasn't my favourite part (which is saying a lot about the show's quality, because that became increasingly central to the story, yet I still really enjoyed watching.)

I'm impressed as heck with Matt King's acting. I never expected to warm to Henry's character so much. In the real world, I'm married to someone who spent a lot of time decades ago photographing performers like Henry (and who still goes to a lot of loud, indie band shows to take photos--he's at one tonight.)

The loud rock scene is one I've never found very tolerable, but the story, and Henry's character both seem to move on from stereotypes about the music genre and the people who play it.

Claudia Karvan and the rest of the cast are also very good and I thoroughly agree with another reviewer who mentioned the child actors are exceptional (and the writing for them isn't the usual predictable stuff.)

I'm going to check whether there's anything else some of these cast members worked on that I might be able to watch.