The Sheep Detectives

★★★☆

The Sheep Detectives (2026)

Runtime: 109 minutes

MPAA: Rated PG for thematic material, some violent content and brief language.

Sometimes, never underestimate a film geared for younger audiences or have preconceived opinions about their limitations, nature and intent. The Sheep Detectives is one of those films.

The high-concept premise might sound ridiculous at first. Sheep talk! And their shepherd George Hardy (Hugh Jackman), who takes care of them and reads murder mystery stories to them every night, is mysteriously found dead one morning. After some deliberation and adventuring, the sheep eventually learn that George left a will with a huge fortune, where suspects are eventually narrowed down. As read out by George's lawyer Lydia Harbottle (Emma Thompson), the suspects include a shepherd Caleb Merrow (Tosin Cole), butcher Ham Gilyard (Conleth Hill), innkeeper Beth Pennock (Hong Chau), clumsy police officer Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun), George's daughter Rebecca Hampstead (Molly Gordon) and son Peter van Buren. A journalist Elliot Matthews (Nicholas Galitzine) works with them to solve the case, hoping that this coverage will give him a promotion.

I haven't even talked about the sheep. There's a flock of sheep that George cares for, and it'd take ages to list each one of them down. What's convenient (for me) is that The Sheep Detectives eventually centers on Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Mopple (Chris O'Dowd) and Sebastian (Bryan Cranston). Lily is the "smartest" sheep in the flock, Mopple never forgets things, and Sebastian is an outcast who roams the terrains for days. The way that all the sheep and eccentric characters of the relatively small town of Denbrook are introduced is slightly old-fashioned and clunky, but once the murder mystery is on, The Sheep Detectives gets into motion.

Written by Craig Mazin and directed by Kyle Balda, the film is also a thoughtful and empathetic consideration of mortality, time and innocence. When the sheep are fed the truth about how death is and the nature of people or places, they all choose to forget it, which works for them. In our lives, there isn't an option to forget what's happened to us. We can't run away from trauma and grief; simply using it as a psychological protective shield means that we erase the people we love, stagnates our resilience, and for the sheep, prevents justice as the real murderer would get away with everything. I get that they're sheep, but there are also times where it feels like they spell things out or over-explain, rather than let their eyes express them more subtly. Speaking of eyes, the sheep specifically focus on these, knowing that they convey the person's true internal state.

Back to the mystery. While the human cast are somewhat underutilised, the film eventually narrows its focus on officer Tim, whose foolishness is initially off-putting, but seeing him step up to the task and become the hero with the sheep's assistance is somehow inspiring. George's will hands out analogies like Bad Shephered, Spring Lamb, Winter Lamb, Victim and Two Murders, and the film cleverly uses these labels to misdirect viewers and immediately classify the suspects into each category. In this aspect, the whodunnit is engaging. Again - and I know I'm being very nitpicky here - its ingeniousness isn't quite up to the best of the genre. Take, for example, Rian Johnson's Knives Out franchise. His mysteries are presented in front of your eyes, so the films never deceive you or inorganically withhold information. The solution becomes a matter of perspective. A name can be mispronounced. A distraction can direct our eyes away from a sneaky bait-and-switch. Here, the minute details and framing of our prime suspect are intentionally suppressed, with many crucial scenes being forcibly pushed off-screen. Still, a minor reservation.

I will expect most people to label this as "Sheep: A Knives Out Mystery". The bare-bones structure is similar to it, but the film is more compassionate in how it deals with growing up and learning hard, undeniable truths. It's a film that compresses two stories together which is a bit uneven, but somehow finds a way to make both work beautifully. Sheep don't turn into clouds. Like humans, the passage of time is unrelenting, and the world moves on irregardless. I'm reminded of a line from Train Dreams, "The dead tree is as important as the living one. There must be something for us to learn from that." The Sheep Detectives is a sincere attempt in inviting us to do the same.