As Flushed Away gears up for its debut in UK cinemas, a specially animated Plasticine Melvyn Bragg introduces tonight’s South Bank Show profile of Aardman Animation’s Nick Park, whose small and big-screen hits include Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run and Creature Comforts, examining the filmmaker’s stringent working practices and asking why the studio has been so successful. Park also discusses his love of stop-motion animation and its future in a CGI-dominated world. We see him unwind by bird-watching in the countryside, and eavesdrop on the close-knit Aardman team, whose new film is described as a “radical departure”. Flushed Away opens in the UK this Friday, December 1st, while The South bank Show can be seen on ITV1 London from 10:45pm.

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