Passions: When it comes to films of the year, I have my own pecking order – Alison Gray

The Chicken Run sequel, 23 years after the original, is my must-watch movie

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is released on Netflix from 15 December

I’ve heard Napoleon is pretty good and I really enjoyed those twin summer hits Oppenheimer and Barbie. But I already know that there is only one film of the year for me and it’s available today on Netflix. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is the long-awaited sequel to the instant classic starring Ginger, Rocky and a cast of loveable chooks on an escape mission from the nasty farmer Mrs Tweedy (voiced by the fabulously scary Miranda Richardson, who returns in the new movie) and her pie machine which was first screened in 2000.

Twenty-three years is a long time to wait for an update on their adventures but when you discover the real time stop-motion animation processes used by the Aardman Animations team and Nick Park their creator, you can understand the wait. There’s no CGI here, no AI, just hours and hours of painstaking modelling clay beak manipulation which means an output of just three seconds of footage for a day’s work.

But boy is it worth it. I’ve seen the trailer and it made me laugh my socks off several times. This time our feathered friends need to break in to a facility which is plumping up poultry for the large scale production of the titular nuggets.

The baddie Mrs Tweedy is back along with a strong voice cast including our very own Lynn Ferguson as Mac, loosely based on Scotty from Star Trek, who masterminds the Heath Robinson-style contraptions the hens invent for their secret mission. There is jeopardy – since we last encountered them Rocky and Ginger have hatched Molly, a strong-willed heroine who wants to make her own way in the world.

Do you have to be a chicken owner to truly love the movie? I don’t think so, but I do get a sense that the animators have spent time observing comedy hen behaviour. I know the birds tend to have fixed expressions in real life, but until you have seen a greedy hen running for food slip on a patch of ice, frantically flapping her wings with one foot in the air in an effort to remain upright, you don’t know the expression nonplussed.

Sadly our three don’t knit though I would love it if they did. This is the ultimate Christmas movie, it’s about the spirit of these hens. As the trailer has it, “Live free range or die frying.”

Alison Gray is Assistant Editor of The Scotsman​