Rex the Runt is an animated (claymation) television show produced by Aardman Animations. Its main characters are four Plasticine dogs: Rex, Wendy, Bob and Vince.

The series began with a short, Ident, in 1989 directed by Richard Golezsowski. After a long gestation period this developed into two unaired shorts and then thirteen ten-minute episodes that first aired over two weeks on BBC2 from December 1998. A second thirteen episode series aired from September 2001 on the same channel. As well as the core cast guest voices included Morwenna Banks, Judith Chalmers, Antoine De Caunes , Bob Holness, Bob Monkhouse, Jonathan Ross, Arthur Smith, June Whitfield and Eddie Izzard.

The animation is unusual in that the models are almost two-dimensional and are animated to exaggerate this - they are flattened in appearance and animated on a sheet of glass with the backgrounds behind the sheet.

The stories are quite surreal with plots including:

• Using Bob's shrinking ray to reduce the city of Birmingham to a domestic ornament (with a waste disposal problem)
• Going back in time to prevent their house being stolen
• Rex being turned into spaghetti
• Rex, Wendy and Bob fall down the bottom of the bed and find a sex clinic

External link

• http://www.aardman.com/rextherunt/window.html