The magic of Aardman's films and series is that it is quintessentially British. Shaun the sheep, as a spin-off from Wallace and Gromit was built on this heritage. This series, produced fort Netflix, was clearly designed to broaden the appeal to an American audience, and I get the business logic. But in doing so, they have weakened the franchise. It starts with the opening credits, and the incongruous appearance of a squirrel which does not feature as a strong or interesting character later on.
Some of the new stories (e.g. turning the farm into some kind of tourist experience) lack the good storytelling infused with insightful social and cultural observations that made earlier series so enjoyable. Instead, the stories attempt to impose US cultural tropes (eg. the halloween episode with the scary snails eating the pumpkins) onto a British rural setting, which doesn't make sense.
Either you make it a true American horror story, and it is the pigs next door that steal the pumpkins in order to engage into a scary ritual, or you make it British, and take the premise that the Farmer had been hoping to showcase the pumpkins at a farmers' show, and then his dreams of glory would have been crushed by some series of inept decisions, only to be rescued at the last minute by the ingenuity of the farm animals, led by shaun and bitzer. Instead the script ended half-way in-between with unbelievably dangerous snails, disappointing both cultural expectations: the happy ending with the trick-or-treat scene was piss weak. Lacking creativity and imagination. Not all episodes are as weak as this one, but the standards have been lowered. I don't believe that you have to lower your standards in order to be more successful, but this series seems to go in that direction.
Don't get me wrong: this is still a very nicely produced animation series which your kids will enjoy watching. But it now lacks the irony and social commentary of the original, because it seems to have lost its cultural grounding.
