The art and craft of stop-motion animation has been celebrated in several exhibitions recently, including a show at London’s South Bank Centre and last year’s Tim Burton retrospective at the Design Museum.

Now it’s the turn of Aardman, as the studio celebrates almost half a century of silly characters, cracking jokes and comical villains in a new exhibition in London.

Since its founding in 1972 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, the Bristol-based Aardman has cultivated an identity as one of animation’s most trusted and commercially successful production houses. Animator Nick Park joined in 1985, bringing Aardman Oscar success in 1991 with Creature Comforts — the first of many.

Widespread critical acclaim led to high-profile partnerships with Hollywood companies DreamWorks and Sony Pictures in the early 2000s. But it’s the studio’s homegrown history of feature films, animated shorts, TV series and various other projects that take centre stage at the Young V&A for the new ‘Inside Aardman — Wallace and Gromit and Friends’ exhibition.

Aardman is the British studio behind beloved stop-motion animations such as the Wallace and Gromit films. Now its pioneering creative magic gets a tribute at an exhibition in London

Drawn from the studio’s 50-year legacy, the gallery’s impressive collection of sets, puppets and other behind-the-scenes material provides an affectionate look at the production stories behind some of Aardman’s most celebrated animated creations.

THE CRAFT BEHIND THE ART

The exhibition is a quickfire journey through the techniques and technologies of handmade claymation that have defined the company’s signature animation style.

We learn about the moveable metal armatures and sculpturing of Plasticine, silicone rubber and foam that build Aardman’s three-dimensional models. And we get to see the invisible labour of foley artists (sound creators) and sound designers involved in the realisation of Aardman’s animated screen worlds.

At the centre of the exhibition is the literal flagship piece — the huge galleon from The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists! (2012), which towers over the curated collection of miniatures. Other highlights include the prison cell set from Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024), home to the villainous penguin Feathers McGraw. Visitors can also create their own performances and stop-motion shorts in special interactive booths.

One of the most welcome curiosities is that the archival and audiovisual materials are organised to reflect the various stages of stop-motion animation as a creative process. An impressive collection of pre-production artefacts include never-before-seen storyboards, concept art and illustrations. All are testament to the meticulous craftsmanship of the animators and highlight the almost imperceptible details involved in building stop-motion animation from the ground up.

Lesser-known processes like needle-felting and “dope sheets” (drawings that break down dialogue into the appropriate mouth shapes frame-by-frame) accompany the more recognisable three-dimensional characters that celebrate the artisanal logic powering Aardman’s creativity.

What is clear from this peek inside the magical animated world of Aardman is that its animators are quintessential problem-solvers. The exhibition’s focus on the early Morph shorts reveals how clingfilm can function as an excellent substitute for water.

Similarly, the models and miniatures from A Grand Day Out (1989) show that lentils can have the appearance of well-worn rivets. Even icing sugar can give claymation models a duller, matte look. In the hands of Aardman’s skilled animators, everyday objects and materials can be transformed in all kinds of ways to sell the illusion.

Notable too among the wealth of handmade materials and processes is the spotlight on computer imaging and other forms of digital intervention — a surprise, perhaps, given Aardman’s renowned dedication to working with tangible, material objects. Yet the crude sketches doodled on scraps of paper from which the earliest story and character ideas were formed give way, in the exhibition’s closing stages, to a recognition of other kinds of animated techniques.

Computer-generated layering and 3D printing add in visual effects largely impossible to achieve in stop-motion. Green screens and even virtual reality visualisations help the animators “design and test ideas for sets before building them.” All show how digital technology has come to occupy a central place in the production pipeline of Aardman films.

Rather than obscure such processes behind the lucrative business of handcraft for which Aardman is internationally celebrated, the exhibition rightly makes a virtue of the virtual. The studio chooses not to obscure how and where digital processes have contributed to their big-screen blockbusters — even if their computer-animated films Flushed Away (2006) and Arthur Christmas (2011) are curiously sidelined.

Many visitors will be well-acquainted with the characters and objects brought together for Inside Aardman, yet there is enough devotion to animation as an industrial art form to satisfy creative practitioners and historians alike.

This excellent collection at the V&A show confirms Aardman as masters of their craft within the tradition of British animation, and a studio that can rightfully claim to be the true pioneers of Plasticine.

The writer is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities at King’s College, London in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 22nd, 2026

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THE WEEK THAT WAS

Meri Zindagi Hai Tu | ARY, Fri-Sat 8.00pm

This phenom­enally popular show takes a detour into humour before swinging back to angst-filled trauma bond at breakneck speed.

Kaamyar (Bilal Abbas) cannot forgive Ayra (Hania Aamir) for not believing him when an explicit video of him went viral on the eve of their wedding. Curiously, he does forgive his clingy ex, Faria (Warda Saleem), who drugged him, and orchestrated his sexual assault and release of the video. In fact, he regularly hangs out with her and rejoins their circle of friends, while snubbing and sniping at Ayra, his wife. Writer Radain Shah uses a highly sensitive and painful issue as a clumsy plot point, and is rewarded with commercial success.

As Pakistani dramas have gained a foothold with Indian audiences, the ethical and cultural underpinnings of scripts are shifting for a more generalised, secular gaze, with a thin veneer of family values. Ayra may be an empowered, educated heroine but she has fallen into the traditional role of the “fix-it” daughter-in-law — not only healing Kaamyar and taking care of his grandmother, but talking sense into his bickering parents. The show remains superficially entertaining but, even for its genre, strains the limits of credibility.

Sara Appi | Geo TV, Mon-Tues 8.00pm

This is a story reminiscent of the recent blockbuster, Noor Jehan. Savera Nadeem plays Sara, an elder sister who puts aside hopes of marriage and children to raise her three orphaned brothers. Their happy family is a myth the brothers have forced themselves to believe in.

Sara Appi’s control gave them safety as children, but stifles them as adults. Sara uses emotional blackmail and maintains financial authority over her brothers for complete control. The eldest, Burhan (Sami Khan), is a weak man but somehow persuades a girl (Sidra Niazi) into a secret marriage. The angry matriarch Sara is forced to accept the new bride but humiliates and punishes her to assert dominance and power over the family. The youngest, Usman (Khaqan Shahnawaz), is in love with an independent-minded girl from a wealthy family, and is also afraid to speak up.

All three brothers have stunted personalities and live in constant fear of their older sister, who owns their family business. While this is a reasonably entertaining look at a recurring motif in our cultural fabric, the depth of writing is missing in places. Savera Nadeem performs well as the regal Sara, but has failed to show the vulnerable or feminine side of her character as yet.

Ishq Mein Tere Sadqay | Geo TV, Daily 9.00pm

Two beautiful women who look alike, Hoor and Noor (both played by Anika Zulfikar), and one obsessed lover, Zulfikar Shah (Muneeb Butt), are at the centre of this story from writer Rehana Aftab.

Despite wealth, status and education, Zulfikar is an angry, impulsive man, for whom violence is second nature. He fought his disapproving family to marry Hoor, the one person who loves him and tries to get him into therapy to resolve his issues. On a parallel track, Noor looks just like Hoor, but lives the life of Cinderella as the unpaid servant of her stepmother and quarrelsome stepsisters.

When tragedy strikes Zulfikar, he loses his beloved wife but, to his amazement, he meets her lookalike Noor. Is this a second chance at happiness or more misery for the unfortunate Noor, who is already married to an abusive man? This is a commercial masala-type serial, full of black-and-white characters and lots of melodrama.

What To Watch Out For (Or Not)

Hamrahi | Geo TV, Coming soon

After playing an array of toxic, angry heroes, Danish Taimoor takes the character up a couple of notches with machine guns blazing in the upcoming Hamrahi.

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 22nd, 2026

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Outside of classics like Pride and Prejudice, romance fiction has not historically been adapted often for the screen, despite its immense popularity. The success of Bridgerton (2020-) led to countless articles about what romance novels should be adapted for the screen next when it first premiered.

Now more and more romance adaptations are starting to appear — but what makes the translation from page to screen really sing?

The history of romance novel adaptations

Romance adaptations have given us cultural juggernauts, such as Twilight (2008-12), Fifty Shades of Grey (2015-18) and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018-21).

But romance adaptations have historically been low-budget and escaped mainstream notice.

From Bridgerton to Heated Rivalry, what’s the secret to a good book-to-screen romance?

Authors like Nora Roberts and Debbie Macomber have proved fruitful grounds for made-for-TV adaptations by Hallmark and Lifetime. Passionflix entered the streaming market in 2017 with the sole purpose to adapt romance novels — including Lick (2024) by Australian author Kylie Scott.

Canadian streamer Crave has turned several romances into TV movies, such as Recipe for Romance (2025), an adaptation of Sweet on You by Filipino author Carla de Guzman. Amazon has also joined the game.

The proportion of books that have made it to the screen (and into cultural conversation) is still small. But the needle is moving. This year sees adaptations of Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard, Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus and Emily Henry’s People We Meet On Vacation.

This is to say nothing of the game-changing popularity of a romance adaptation by Crave released late in 2025: Heated Rivalry.

While it has always been popular, romance has become too prominent to ignore: BookTok and Bookstagram have made romance — and its enormous audience — more visible than ever before.

What makes a good romance adaptation?

Romance readers will embrace or reject an adaptation depending on whether the creators love and respect the genre or misunderstand and misrepresent it — or, worse, condescend to and exploit it.

Heated Rivalry shows what happens when a creator truly, in romance critic Olivia Waite’s words, “accept[s] romance’s invitations.”

Rival hockey players Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) commence a clandestine affair as rookies and gradually fall in love. The series has surpassed 600 million viewing minutes and shows no sign of slowing down.

It has been so successful that Netflix promised the new season of Bridgerton would take audiences to “the cottage”: a reference to that series’ third episode — and a term now synonymous with Heated Rivalry’s finale and happy ending.

The happy ending is crucial to the romance genre, but it is not the only thing Heated Rivalry gets right. While not all romance novel adaptations should be carbon copies of this series, anyone considering adapting romance for the screen in future would be well served to look at what it does right.

Romance novels are stories of a small, compact universe. At the centre is a couple (or polycule’s) attraction and journey towards a serious relationship. Sub-plots and supporting characters matter to the extent that they are part of this journey. In a romance, the leads are all romance fans care about.

This is something Bridgerton has struggled with. While it centres a new lead couple each season, it is also concerned with servicing the plotlines of past and future leads. This has led to a proliferation of subplots, which often distract from the romantic spine.

Heated Rivalry consistently centres Shane and Ilya. Taking place over ten years, during which period both men presumably live full lives, creator Jacob Tierney spotlights the sporadic, stolen moments they are together. The secondary romance between hockey player Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) and his secret smoothie barista boyfriend Kip (Robbie CK) is mostly siloed to its own self-contained episode, with its relevance to the main plot made crystal clear at the end of episode five.

The love plot must be central, and must be treated with the deepest sincerity and gravity. Romance is an inherently earnest genre. It is often funny, but it is never ironic.

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023), adapted from Casey McQuiston’s book, received mixed reviews for glossing over many of the book’s complexities. But one of its successes is treating the high-concept love plot between a British prince and the son of the United States president seriously. (Their happy ending is bound up with a broader political one: a successful US re-election representing a liberal wing; the potential promise of a more progressive monarchy.)

The love at the romance novel’s heart — and the attendant joy and hope of the happy ending — is serious business, and must be treated as such for an adaptation to succeed.

This aspect of romance is often positioned as a “guilty pleasure”, something to be embarrassed by or make fun of, but it is hard to overstate how vital it is to the success of the form.

The worst mistake an adaptation of a romance can make is being ashamed of where it came from. Romance readers are well aware when someone is sneering at them, or trying to take advantage of the lucrative market they represent while trying to “elevate” the genre by chipping away at its core tenets and pleasures.

Heated Rivalry is the only adaptation that has entirely and wholeheartedly embraced the invitations of the romance genre, foregrounding romance and leaning pronouncedly into sincerity. We hope many more adaptations will learn from it going forward.

Jodi McAlister is Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture at Deakin University in Australia

Jayashree Kamble is Professor of English at City University of New York in the US

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 22nd, 2026

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