Wallace & Gromit are returning to the small screen as the centrepiece of the BBC’s Christmas schedule. They will star in a new 30-minute film, A Matter of Loaf and Death, their first outing since The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the 2005 feature-length production that won an Oscar.

The film, which is expected to be screened on Christmas Day, will join a new production of The 39 Steps, a new Doctor Who and a special episode of The Royle Family at the heart of the BBC’s seasonal offering.

A Matter of Loaf and Death is the fourth Wallace & Gromit short film made by Aardman Animations and the pair’s creator, Nick Park. It shows the inventor and his hound running a bakery, Top Bun, as other bakers fall victim to a “cereal killer”.

At a screening of the film yesterday, Park said that the first Wallace & Gromit tale, A Grand Day Out, took seven years to make, compared with seven months this time.

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