"The Smeds and the Smoos"
Production company Magic Light Pictures has released a first look image of its new festive animation for BBC One "The Smeds and the Smoos". In this animated intergalactic adventure, the red Smeds and the blue Smoos must learn to overcome their differences and work together to find young Janet and Bill – who eloped to escape their families’ long standing rivalries.
The cast stars Adjoa Andoh as Grandmother Smoo, Bill Bailey as Grandfather Smed, Rob Brydon as Uncle Smoo, Daniel Ezra as Bill, Sally Hawkins as Narrator, Ashna Rabheru as Janet, and Meera Syal as Aunt Smed.
Adjoa Andoh says: "There's just the sort of ignorant prejudice that people can harbor about each other until they come together and actually love and that survival and kinship are the things that bind all of us. Grandma Smoo, utterly capable, she can drive a rocket, she can clump about the place, she can blow her trumpet, delight in her kids and her grandkids and she can hate with a passion as well. Grandma Smoo's not a woman of mild tastes, everything's fairly strong with her. So when she's your implacable enemy, she's implacably your enemy. But you could change her mind at any moment and then she will love you to death."
Bill Bailey says: “I think the main themes of the film are that we should just accept differences in others. I think the thing I get from it is that the older generation tend to be more resistant to change. And actually, sometimes it takes the younger generation to sort of breach that divide. Grandpa Smed, he's the kind of patriarch of the Smed family, and he's very much the kind of protector of the family, and he's in charge. And he's quite sort of traditional, and a bit stuck in his ways. And he's sort of a little bit of a stick in the mud, really, but he's kind. He's not an ogre. He's a kindly old grandpa who cares about his family, I think that's the best way to describe him.”