Rex the Runt
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Rex the Runt is an animated (claymation) television show produced by Aardman Animations. Its main characters are four Plasticine dogs: Rex, Wendy, Bob and Vince.
The series began with a short, Ident, in 1989 directed by Richard Golezsowski. After a long gestation period this developed into two unaired shorts and then thirteen ten-minute episodes that first aired over two weeks on BBC2 from December 1998. A second thirteen episode series aired from September 2001 on the same channel. As well as the core cast guest voices included Morwenna Banks, Judith Chalmers, Antoine De Caunes, Bob Holness, Bob Monkhouse, Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton, Arthur Smith, June Whitfield and Eddie Izzard.
The animation is unusual in that the models are almost two-dimensional and are animated to exaggerate this - they are flattened in appearance and animated on a sheet of glass with the backgrounds behind the sheet.
The stories are quite surreal with plots including:
- Using Bob's shrinking ray to reduce the city of Birmingham to a domestic ornament (with a waste disposal problem)
- Going back in time to prevent their house being stolen
- Rex being turned into spaghetti
- Rex, Wendy and Bob fall down the bottom of the bed and find a sex clinic
- Destroying the world by drilling in the north pole
Series One has been released on video in the United Kingdom, whilst a DVD of all 26 episodes has been released in the United States.