Shaun The Sheep (lost pilot of British stop-motion TV series; early to mid 2000s)

A screenshot supposedly from the pilot.

Status: Lost

In 1995, the character Shaun The Sheep made his debut in the 1995 Wallace & Gromit special "A Close Shave," the special proved to be a success, winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, the same year.

Popularity was found with one of the special's characters, Shaun, with merchandise of the character surpassing that of Wallace & Gromit during "A Close Shave"'s release, this newfound popularity gave the team at Aardman animations the idea to create a spin-off show on the character.

Pilot

At some point in the early 2000s after the production of Chicken Run and before the production of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a pilot was made to pitch the series to broadcasters, this pilot was on a lower budget than the final series and had smaller and less detailed sets, Shaun and the flock's models also shared more of a resemblance to that of their appearance in "A Close Shave" likely recycling there puppets from the special, the only character that would appear in the final series which also appeared in the pilot was that of Shirley, with his design being more Wallace & Gromit based, featuring purple eyelids, longer ears and a thinner head. Several key characters seen in the final series such as Bitsizer the sheep dog or the farmer, would not make an appearance in this pilot.

Availability

The pilot never publicly aired on television or got a physical media release, only appearing in test screenings to broadcast companies, in 2004, the pilot would be shown to the BBC, who would greenlight the series for production and airing on their sister channel, CBBC. That same year various articles would be published by the BBC showing the only currently available screenshot from the pilot. On April 17th, 2007, an article was posted on an exhibition run by Aardman showing unseen material from Shaun The Sheep with an image from the pilot attached, this could imply the pilot was shown at this event, however, it isn't known for sure. In 2005, a fire broke out at Aardman's storage warehouse destroying tons of production props from Aardman's films (excluding The Curse of The Were-Rabbit, which props from the film were either on tour for the premiere of the film or at Aardman directly), this likely included the props from the pilot, however, the production tapes from the pilot and other Aardman films were kept separately from the props, meaning the tapes still exist in Aardman's archives with the potential of a future release. In May of 2022, concept art of Shirley was released on the official Shaun the Sheep Twitter account, also revealed in the post that the concept art artist for the pilot was a woman named Sylvia Bull. A Twitter user called Random Sheep, also stated they were the voice of one of the background sheep in the pilot, also in the post it was revealed that Shirley went by a different name at one point and was originally simply called "the big fat sheep" this was likely removed in the final series due to it being offensive to certain audiences.

Gallery

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  Concept art of Shirley made for the pilot by Sylvia Bull.