A Sheep Who Started as a Throwaway Gag
Shaun the Sheep did not begin as a franchise. He was a single joke. In Nick Park's 1995 Wallace and Gromit short A Close Shave, a small lamb gets accidentally clipped by Gromit's wool-washing machine and briefly becomes bald and bewildered. Park named the lamb Shaun (a pun on shorn) and moved on. Aardman Animations moved on too, for about a decade.
Then, in 2007, Aardman went back. They spun Shaun out into his own CBBC/BBC series, stripping away dialogue entirely and telling stories purely through physical comedy, sound effects, and the expressive plasticine faces of a farm full of animals. The show became a surprise global hit, airing in over 170 countries, and eventually generated enough affection to justify a theatrical feature. Shaun the Sheep Movie arrived in 2015, directed by Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, and stayed true to the series: no spoken words, all mime and visual storytelling, with a genuinely touching story about a sheep who misses his farmer buried inside the slapstick. A sequel, Farmageddon, followed in 2019, adding an alien subplot and a bigger production budget while keeping the same wordless register. The franchise sits in a rare place: children love it instinctively, and adults find it technically dazzling.
Every Version of Shaun the Sheep
From the original short to the sequel film, the spinoffs, and the games
Shaun the Sheep: Versions by Year
- 1995Shaun debuts in A Close Shave (Wallace and Gromit short) A Close Shave
- 2007Shaun the Sheep TV series launches on BBC/CBBC (Aardman) Shaun the Sheep
- 2009Timmy Time spin-off begins, following Timmy the lamb from the show Timmy Time
- 2011Shaun the Sheep: Home Sheep Home 2 mobile puzzle game released Shaun the Sheep - Home Sheep Home 2
- 2015Shaun the Sheep Movie theatrical release Shaun the Sheep Movie
- 2015Shaun the Sheep: The Farmer's Llamas BBC One special Shaun the Sheep: The Farmer's Llamas
- 2019A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon theatrical release A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
- 2021Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas Netflix special Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas
If You Love the Silence: No-Dialogue Animation
Films and shows that trust physical comedy and image over spoken words
If You Love Aardman: Stop-Motion Comedy
Plasticine worlds and British wit from the same studio and its cousins
If You Love the City Fish-Out-of-Water Story
Animals (and innocents) navigating a bewildering human world
If You Love the Heart Underneath: Missing Home
Stories about animals or outsiders trying to find their way back
The definitive version is the 2015 film
The original series is wonderful, but the 2015 Shaun the Sheep Movie is the moment the concept found its ceiling. Director Richard Starzak and his team took a premise that could have been a stretched TV episode and made something that genuinely earns its feature length. The farmer's amnesia plot gives the film a quiet emotional core that the episodic series rarely had space for. It is the version that proves the wordless approach is not a gimmick but a genuine artistic choice.
The most underrated: Farmageddon is a better sequel than it got credit for
Farmageddon (2019) was reviewed as a slight step down, partly because the alien conceit felt like a genre stunt. That reading is too narrow. The film handles its E.T.-style premise with real warmth and keeps the series' commitment to pure visual storytelling intact. The production design is the most ambitious of any Aardman film to date, and the relationship between Shaun and the alien Lu-La is genuinely affecting. Give it a second watch.
The one to skip: the games are franchise filler
The licensed games, including the mobile puzzle title Home Sheep Home 2, are competent enough as tie-ins but share almost nothing with what makes the films and show special. The wordless physical comedy that defines Shaun cannot survive a touch-screen interface, and these titles do not try hard to find an equivalent. They are licensed product, not creative extension. The Aardman-made film and TV content is the whole story here.