Every once in a while, my kids will develop a fixation on something from before their time. My son latched onto Courage the Cowardly Dog for about a solid year when he was two, at which point it was what he asked to watch most. After they removed it from Netflix, we started showing him Wallace and Gromit, mostly on disc. From there, we discovered Shaun the Sheep, which my daughter has just gotten interested in as well. All this without my encouragement.

Shaun’s first appearance was in “A Close Shave.” In that short, he wandered into Wallace’s house during a wool shortage. Somehow, he has now ended up at Mossy Bottom Farm in the north of England. (I’m not British myself, but the internal clues are there if you know much about British regionalisms.) There’s a small flock of other sheep all owned by the nameless Farmer. In theory, they are herded by Bitzer, the dog, but in practice, they mostly do what they want to. If anyone’s in charge, it’s Shaun.

Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the show. Oh, it’s fine, but it’s not my favourite. I’d rather watch “A Close Shave.” On the other hand, this is definitely a show where I’m comfortable saying it’s not for me. It’s for my kids, and kids their age. It’s charming and cute and all that, but my kids are a lot more interested in physical comedy than I am. One of the things I like about the Wallace and Gromit shorts is that the background is filled with wordplay, and there’s none of that here. The farmer doesn’t read, and neither do any of the animals.

The farm and its environs are definitely full of characters. There’s the pigs, the goat, a cat, the Farmer’s Niece, and so forth. Several of them have considerably more personality than most of the sheep, as most of the sheep are kind of boring and nondescript. The show seems to be trying to have it both ways; Shaun is the most interesting and dynamic of the sheep characters, but we’re also supposed to be seeing the sheep characters as individuals with developed personalities.

Come to that, we only really know Shaun has a name is that we met him in “A Close Shave.” And, of course, because he’s the title character, and they sing his name a lot in the theme song. I’m not sure why we know the dog’s name. None of the characters talk. This theoretically makes it the most easily exportable Aardman work, given there’s seldom even any signage to translate. It’s also especially handy for my four-year-old, who’s just barely reading. This, to me, is another sign that the show isn’t for me.

Believe me, I’d much rather the kids watch this than a lot of the other things they like. I’ll admit that the episode where Bitzer manages to break the new TV just reminded me of the episode of Masha and the Bear where Masha and Panda do the same, but it’s still the same sort of fun shenanigans that works in a relatively silent series. Shaun himself is a fun character, even if I have a lot of questions about what, exactly, is going on and how Shaun ended up there.

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