Our favourite animated heroes return, facing arch nemesis Feathers McGraw alongside a malfunctioning AI gnome – it’s an exciting and utterly timeless joy

Forget Tom Cruise riding his motorbike off a cliff in Mission: Impossible. Wallace and Gromit are on a comfy narrowboat teetering on the edge of the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, having defiantly chucked a bunch of boots at the villain … weapons which, gloriously, have the sole purpose of facilitating a gag about something getting “rebooted”. Nick Park’s immortal creations return in the first Wallace and Gromit adventure for 16 years, a stop-motion animated sequel to the 1993 Oscar-winning short The Wrong Trousers. It’s exciting, ingenious, funny and an unmissable Christmas treat.

Our human and canine heroes are, as ever, inventors, cheese enthusiasts and warriors in the cause of righteousness and their new confrontation with wickedness involves references to Eric Morecambe, Buster Keaton and the Flintstones – but also to Virginia Woolf and John Milton. So as well as everything else, Wallace and Gromit are doing their bit to keep English literature alive in UK universities. As we join the story, Wallace has invented a new “smart” Gnome-robot, or Norbot (unsettlingly voiced by Reece Shearsmith) which helps around the house and garden. Wallace becomes increasingly infatuated with his new robo-helpmate and Gromit’s feelings are hurt.