DUBAI: It’s been a little over 16 years since we were last treated to a new “Wallace & Gromit” film from the brilliant stop-motion animation studio Aardman Animations. But now the eccentric UK inventor and his loyal, put-upon dog are back in a feature-length film that will delight fans old and new.

“Vengeance Most Fowl” is a straightforward enough story: Wallace, thinking he’s helping Gromit out, invents a robotic “smart gnome” called Norbot to help the dog with his gardening. Gromit isn’t impressed, but the neighbors are, and soon Wallace has set up a new home improvements business to help alleviate his financial struggles. Meanwhile, the duo’s arch-enemy, the villainous penguin Feather McGraw, whom they caught stealing the famous Blue Diamond from the city museum (back in 1993’s “The Wrong Trousers”), is serving a life sentence behind bars (in a zoo). But when he spots a news report about Wallace’s new invention, he sees a chance to take revenge. His plan starts with hacking Norbot and ruining Wallace’s new business — while making Wallace the prime suspect in a crime spree — and also involves breaking out of captivity.

Plot complexity isn’t — and never has been — the main draw of creator Nick Park’s “Wallace & Gromit” works, though. Their beauty lies in their extraordinary craftsmanship, gentle social commentary (this time, much of that focuses on our obsession with, and reliance on, tech, gadgets and AI), throw-away comic observations, and the sweet portrayal of the relationship between the main protagonists — long-suffering, stoic Gromit and his often-oblivious, exuberant owner. It’s a relationship in which the roles are often reversed; Gromit having to be the ‘adult’ taking care of the day-to-day tasks while Wallace loses himself in his own imagination. And, as ever, Wallace pushes Gromit’s patience to the limits before remembering that his dog is the only one who never loses faith in him.

The stop-motion animation skill displayed with Gromit, especially — given that he must convey everything with, basically, his eyes, ears and brow — is breathtaking, but then so is the whole world of “Wallace & Gromit.” It might all be constructed from clay, but it’s more authentic and engaging than 90 percent of what is put out with actual human actors.

DUBAI: “The Day of the Jackal” — a 10-episode series written by Ronan Bennett available to stream in the Middle East on OSN+ — is a contemporary reimagining of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel and the famed 1973 film, directed by Fred Zinnemann. 

UK film star Eddie Redmayne plays the titular Jackal, an extremely thorough and detail-oriented British assassin, often taking on intricate disguises and speaking several languages to get the job done.

“One of the thrills of this experience for me was that the Jackal kind of is an actor. And particularly in Ronan’s version of him now, he’s quite obsessive, and he loves the process.

“And so, the fact that he’s an artist, and he preps the prosthetics himself and he mimics the languages … The whole experience was a sort of actor’s playground, really. And I loved that element of it,” Redmayne told Arab News.

“What I found intriguing about the part was, normally, when I’m playing a part, I kind of reach out to the character, and there were many moments in this in which I was going, ‘OK, so if this guy’s an actor, and he’s quite a proficient actor, how would I navigate my way through this situation? If I had these formidable assassin skills, if I had to lie horrifically to my wife, if I had to manipulate things.’

“So, what’s odd is, of all the characters I played, much more so I found it was about trying to bring that character to me, rather than reaching out to him, which was helped by the fact that it’s the first character I played in 25 years in which he wears contemporary clothes. I’ve been stuck in tweeds and stiff collars. So, that was fun,” he said.

Starring alongside Redmayne is Lashana Lynch, who plays Bianca, an intelligence officer with firearms expertise and a similarly obsessive approach to her work. 

The thrilling series follows a tense cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, with Bianca hot on the heels of the Jackal, who is leaving a trail of bodies in his wake as he evades authorities.

The show traces an uncanny parallel between the two characters. They both have family lives, they are both exacting and skillful at their jobs, but chaos follows wherever they go, often with deadly consequences.

“For me as an actor, it was exciting to see a man and a woman in those positions. I’m very used to the films that I have come across over the years, seeing two men in those positions, and everyone being very excited that one’s going to oscillate between being good and evil,” Lynch said.

“Having a woman being potentially evil is really exciting because it breaks the parameters in a way that kind of re-educates the industry to continue to stay open minded with female characters, and that’s kind of what I’m all about. And to have a team like this that celebrated that and did it within the genre of espionage is special and very new for the kind of TV that I’m used to watching,” Lynch said.