DVD: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists

If not quite at the level of Wallace and Gromit's were-rabbit adventure, Aardman's latest stop-motion feature has its own charm, not least in the figure of its leading man, the Pirate Captain.

Voiced by Hugh Grant, he is a hopeless blackguard of the seas whose doomed attempt to win the Pirate of the Year award lands him aboard Darwin's Beagle.

Cue a playful, visually exquisite Victorian farce filled with delightful incidental details, though not enough belly laughs.