Creature Comforts: Animal Magnetism/Secrets & Lies/Pets at the Vet

I finally saw the premiere of CBS's Creature Comforts, a delightful little series from Aardman Animation, best known for bringing us Wallace and Gromit. This is the third incarnation of Creature Comforts, the first being a 1989 Academy Award-winning short film of the same name. That British short took the audio of interviews with ordinary people living in housing developments and retirement homes and attributed their answers to animals in a zoo. The American version retains all of the charm of its predecessors (there was also a British television series) while presenting a distinctly American vibe.

The look of Creature Comforts is not dissimilar to that of other Aardman creations, including the previously mentioned Wallace and Gromit and the feature film Chicken Run, but it's that familiar style that first grabs you. The animals are simply adorable, with their wide mouths and round bodies. The animation itself is masterfully done, as should be expected from a company with such a great reputation. The choice of movements for the characters worked so seamlessly with the unscripted dialogue I sometimes forgot that these weren't voice actors I was listening to.

That brings me to the true gimmick of the show -- that ordinary people sharing their personal thoughts on all sorts of subjects is what's giving these animals their voice. This week, topics included doctors, animal magnetism and secrets and lies. The humans being interviewed seemed to range in ages and occupations. From the sound of things, the series has done well in representing the American public… well, the American public I'm likely to find on network television.

In this episode, we were presented with the likes of cute children telling jokes, long-married couples pleasantly bickering and a nice young man that doesn't have much luck with the ladies. It's doubtful you'll ever hear an interview from the gangbanger or the deadbeat dad or your local corner prostitute. While those interviews might be colorful, it's simply not the tone Creature Comforts is going for. This show is all about lighthearted, innocent fun and we like our stop-motion animals that way.

The meat of the series is seeing which animals the animators paired to the human dialogue. Some of these juxtapositions resulted in immediate chuckle-inducing visual puns, like the voices of men talking sincerely about the aromatics of wine coming out of the mouths of dogs sniffing the back ends of other dogs, or the fully-submerged fish complaining about his dry skin. Elsewhere, the pairings of voice to animal have a more subtle connection, such as the female panda deflecting the advances of a male panda in a breeding facility, or the lizard child telling bad jokes to crickets. But the episode became most engaging as certain characters began to truly reveal themselves. Most of those memorable scenes came from the couples (the lovebirds, the bees, the horses) that already have a built-in rapport with each other.

Creature Comforts is not life-altering television, but it is some smartly executed, good-natured fun. I'm not likely to find myself laughing from beginning to end, but I was smiling the entire time. This is the epitome of summer viewing. There's really nothing to think about while I was watching -- no storylines to follow, no great mystery to solve. I can just sit back on a warm evening with a glass of lemonade and see what tickles my funny bone.