India, March 7 -- There is a word that recurs in conversations about Aardman Animations: tangibility. The idea that it is, in some way, more real. The sense that the thing one is watching was made by human hands, and that somewhere in the surface of Wallace's grin or Gromit's resigned eyebrow, you can see the fingerprints.

That is not an accident. It's a philosophy.

Fifty years ago, the television landscape was dominated by a very different kind of magic. It was the golden age of Saturday morning cartoons, an era ruled by the industrial efficiency of studios such as Hanna-Barbera and Disney. It was a simpler era, on a tight budget.

Characters such as Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones and Yogi Bear moved against repeating backgrounds, their b...