Synopsis

Rex the Runt is an animated claymation television show produced by Aardman Animations for BBC Bristol in association with EVA Entertainment and Egmont Imagination. Its main characters are four plasticine dogs: Rex, Wendy, Bad Bob and Vince. The series began with a short, Ident, in 1989 directed by Richard Goleszowski. 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 Paul Merton, Morwenna Banks, Judith Chalmers, Antoine de Caunes, Bob Holness, Bob Monkhouse, Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton, Arthur Smith, June Whitfield, Kathy Burke, Pam Ayres and Eddie Izzard.

At the time, the team at Aardman had never known about these films, and did not discover them until a year later, as they found potential to turn these shorts into a series.

From here, the episodes slowly got longer, until the 10-minute episodes that it eventually used.

With help from the crew, a third pilot (North by North Pole) was produced as a pitch for the BBC in 1996, this time with much smoother animation and a plotline that would later define how the series was going to be.

Parts of this pilot were incorporated into the episode "The Adventures On Telly, Part 2" owing to the footage being expensive to reshoot.

Unfortunately, other than a screenshot of the title card, the full pilot has yet to be released to the public.

The production of Series 1 began between late 1997 and early 1998.