Hooves Of Fire was a Christmas televisual event, much like the Wallace And Gromit animations before it. There's an unwritten rule that a big original Christmas animation needs to be created every year for BBC and Channel 4.
Robbie The Reindeer (voiced by a charismatic Ardal O'Hanlon) is a clumsy, naive reindeer living in the shadow of his father, presumably Rudolph. After being expelled from "The Sleigh Team" for being unfit, he retrains to win back his place on Santa's team.
The animation is Grade-A, stop-motion animation evoking Aardman Animation of the past. It was done by BBC Animation Studios\BBC Bristol and has a very similar style. The voice talent reads like a Whose Who of the time with some future A\B-list talent in the form of Robbie Williams, Steve Coogan and Rhys Ifans. This film tied in with Comic Relief and Sports Relief so there are a lot of references from the obvious "red nose" to Alistair McGowan playing sports commentator Des Yeti (obviously based on Des Lynam).
There's some big laugh out loud moments from Ricky Tomlinson playing a boy-racer Santa Claus who wears gold jewellery and tracksuits, musician Seal as a fish-eating Seal and the Fonzie character, Old Jingle an old, crazy reindeer played by Harry Enfield who sounds a lot like Adrian Edmonson.
Personally for me even at 30 minutes I don't get the same amount of joy watching it as I do The Snowman, Father Christmas, Charlie Brown's Christmas or even The Treacle People Christmas special.
Not shown on UK TV since 2003 according to the Genome project for unknown reasons. This has also stopped it reaching a younger audience, but it is fondly remembered by Millenials and older. A DVD was released as was two sequels of more of the same.
Robbie The Reindeer (voiced by a charismatic Ardal O'Hanlon) is a clumsy, naive reindeer living in the shadow of his father, presumably Rudolph. After being expelled from "The Sleigh Team" for being unfit, he retrains to win back his place on Santa's team.
The animation is Grade-A, stop-motion animation evoking Aardman Animation of the past. It was done by BBC Animation Studios\BBC Bristol and has a very similar style. The voice talent reads like a Whose Who of the time with some future A\B-list talent in the form of Robbie Williams, Steve Coogan and Rhys Ifans. This film tied in with Comic Relief and Sports Relief so there are a lot of references from the obvious "red nose" to Alistair McGowan playing sports commentator Des Yeti (obviously based on Des Lynam).
There's some big laugh out loud moments from Ricky Tomlinson playing a boy-racer Santa Claus who wears gold jewellery and tracksuits, musician Seal as a fish-eating Seal and the Fonzie character, Old Jingle an old, crazy reindeer played by Harry Enfield who sounds a lot like Adrian Edmonson.
Personally for me even at 30 minutes I don't get the same amount of joy watching it as I do The Snowman, Father Christmas, Charlie Brown's Christmas or even The Treacle People Christmas special.
Not shown on UK TV since 2003 according to the Genome project for unknown reasons. This has also stopped it reaching a younger audience, but it is fondly remembered by Millenials and older. A DVD was released as was two sequels of more of the same.