Creature Comforts Looks At Our Neuroses

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On the surface, Creature Comforts (premiering tonight on CBS, 8PM EST) comes across as just another summer replacement series. The premise is simple: reduce some man on the street interviews to sound bites, and reproduce them with animal cartoon faces. Fortunately, the premise must have been pitched to CBS a little better than that.

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Creature Comforts is, in fact, one of the brightest spots in a summer season dominated by wannabe “reality” pirates, wannabe filmmaker competitions and, yes, even bingo as a televised sport. Based on the British TV series of the same name, Creature Comforts is a welcome departure from the tried and true formulaic series to which we’ve grown accustomed. There is no plot here — there aren’t even vignettes, although there are some recurring characters. Instead, we get little snippets of conversations, the kind you hear every day, and barely notice. For instance, we hear a woman telling a man how he’ll never get close to her romantically, not particularly amusing until you realize these are pandas conversing. There are bees suffering from allergies, sharks talking about the power of a winning smile, various hypochondriacs and neurotics all in animal and insect guise, all forcing us to look at ourselves in a pointed, if somewhat skewed style.

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Produced by Aardman Animations, the same team that produced the theatrical films Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, Creature Comforts masterfully utilizes stop motion animation to create a world that may appear fanciful, but strikes close to the urban heart. I don’t want to run through all the skits here — words wouldn’t do them justice. Take my word for it. If you want a welcome diversion from from the tripe that is standard summer TV fare, you’d be hard pressed to find something as charming and insightful as Creature Comforts.