Creature Comforts


Creature Comforts is a British stop-motion comedy franchise originating in a 1989 animated short film of the same name. The film matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about their homes, making it appear as if the animals were being interviewed about their living conditions. It was created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations. The film became the basis of a series of television advertisements for the electricity boards in the United Kingdom. In 2003, a television series in the same style was released. An American version of the series was also made. A sequel series, Things We Love, first aired on BBC One in 2024.

The original film

The original Creature Comforts was five minutes and a few seconds long and was conceived and directed by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations, featuring the voices of British non-actors in the same vein as the "man on the street" vox pop interviews. It was produced as part of a series called Lip Synch for Channel 4. The film won Nick Park the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1991.
The film shows various animals in a zoo being interviewed about their living conditions. These include a family of polar bears, Tracey, a depressed female gorilla, a Brazilian lion, a maternal brown four-eyed opossum, and a hippopotamus calf who complain about the cold weather, the poor quality of their enclosures and the lack of space and freedom.
By contrast, a tarsier, Alex, a former circus chicken, a tortoise, and an armadillo praise their enclosures for the comfort and security they bring, and a family of polar bears, particularly one named Andrew, talk about both the advantages and disadvantages of zoos for the welfare of animals. Rather than the subject being one-sided or biased towards one viewpoint, there is a strong balance of opinions in the film, with some interviewees who are happy with their living situation, some who are not, and some who have a neutral opinion.
The voices of each character were performed by residents of both a housing estate and an old people's home. Stop motion animation was then used to animate each character, and the answers given in the interviews were put in the context of zoo animals. The polar bears were voiced by a family who owned a local shop, while the lion was voiced by Nick Park's Brazilian friend. The only credited actress was Julie Sedgewick who voiced the interviewer.

Advertisements

In 1990, Nick Park worked with Phil Rylance and Paul Cardwell to develop a series of British television advertisements for the electricity boards' "Heat Electric" campaign. The creative team of advertising agency GGK had seen the original Creature Comforts film and were hugely impressed by it.
They were convinced that a series of short films modeled on the original film would be ideally suited to television advertising – as long as the advertising was handled with sufficient sensitivity to preserve the integrity and charm of Park's work. The initial result of their collaboration was three 30-second Creature Comforts advertisements, made in the same style as the original film. This led to a series.
Although there had been a tradition of vox pop advertisements going back to the soap powder adverts of the 1960s, the Creature Comforts series was distinctive in its juxtaposition of real-life dialogue and animated creatures. The series featured a variety of endearing plasticine animals, including a tortoise, a cat, a family of penguins and a Brazilian parrot. The characters were seen in their own domestic settings, chatting to an unseen interviewer behind a large microphone.
The characters' dialogue was obtained by taking tape recordings of everyday people talking about the comfort and benefits of the electrical appliances in their homes and then using extracts of these – complete with pauses, false starts, repetitions, hesitations and unscripted use of language. The selected interviewees spoke in a range of down-to-earth regional accents, and the overall effect was of natural conversation. The adverts' warm and cosy tone reflected the warmth and homeliness of central heating.
There was a certain charm about the animations, with their quirky humour and sharpness of observation – such as in the antics of the non-speaking characters and in the odd little things happening in the background. The animations had an unusual expressiveness, with the wit often coming from tiny nuances – such as a dog scratching his ear at a particular moment.
The characterisation was strengthened by having each voice carefully matched to a suitable animal in a combination that would produce a memorable impact. These features were rounded off by a gentle closing voiceover spoken by Johnny Morris. Morris appealed especially to older audiences, who would remember him and his animal conversations on the television programme Animal Magic.
The campaign was a great success and its run was extended over three years. The advertisements received critical acclaim within the advertising industry – with Park, Rylance and Cardwell picking up many top creative awards in Europe and America, including "Best Commercial of the Year" in the 1991 British Television Advertising Awards and "Most Outstanding European Campaign" in the 1991 D&AD Europe Awards. In fact, Creature Comforts was subsequently voted by media professionals as one of the top television advertisements of the last fifty years.
As well as attaining a very high level of viewer recall, the advertisements were much loved – particularly the ones involving Frank, Carol and Pablo. In awarding them a place in The 100 best British ads of the century, the United Kingdom's leading advertising journal Campaign commented "The power of a campaign which can make consumers feel warm towards a utility cannot be underestimated".
The many popular awards won by the Creature Comforts advertisements included being voted fourth in the all time 100 Greatest TV Ads by readers of The Sunday Times and viewers of Channel 4 in April 2000. Their position among the classic advertisements of British television was confirmed when Creature Comforts was voted fourth in ITV's Best Ever Adverts by viewers of ITV in 2005. Finally, in a YouGov survey during 2006, Creature Comforts topped the list of the United Kingdom's alltime favourite animated or puppet characters used in adverts.
The Creature Comforts advertisements have now attained a place in popular culture, and are probably better remembered than the original film that spawned them. However, it is claimed that many members of the public mistakenly remember the commercials as advertising gas heating, the main competitor to electricity.

Influences

The Creature Comforts advertisements were produced in the period 1990 to 1992 and in some ways they were indicative of the shape of things to come in British television advertising. Many commentators believe that there was a fundamental shift in television advertising from the unbridled consumerism and egoism of the 1980s to what is sometimes termed a more "caring" approach in the 1990s. The Creature Comforts advertisements are cited as an early example of this phenomenon.
The format of the Creature Comforts advertisements was so successful that it was replicated in other campaigns in the following decades. In later years, however, members of the public became increasingly conscious of the potential uses of their vox pop interviews. This made it difficult to recapture the spontaneity and innocence of the early Creature Comforts advertisements. Although lookalike animations became relatively commonplace in television advertisements, they were usually scripted and rarely possessed the painstaking attention to detail of the original advertisements.

Credits

  • Director: Nick Park
  • Creative Director: Nick Fordham
  • Art Directors: Phil Rylance, Newy Brothwell
  • Writers: Paul Cardwell, Kim Durdant-Hollamby

    The series

In 2003, a series of Creature Comforts films directed by Richard Goleszowski was made for the British television network ITV by Aardman Animations. The series was distributed globally by Granada International who also handled home video rights except in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, which were retained by Aardman.
The series has since aired as repeats on Comedy Central, usually late at night. Starting in 2005, it has also aired in Australia on ABC, in The Netherlands on Veronica, on pay television channel US TV, and on the Internet, as well as on the Aardman Animations YouTube Channel.
A thirty-minute special in which the regular characters attempt to perform and interpret the Christmas carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was first aired on 25 December 2005. The special was broadcast in Canada on the CBC on 26 December 2005.
Humour pervades all aspects of the series, for example:
The series gently mocks the constructed performance sometimes given by members of the general public when being interviewed for television vox pops and documentaries. This includes the attempts to present a cogent but simple conclusive answer to a general question, a sound bite, and the attempts to present a cheery spin on a complex issue while the subject attempts to hide their personal issues and problems with the issue.
The series is currently repeated on Gold.
The series is also available on the streaming service ITVX.