In the English countryside, a flock of sheep try to solve the mystery of who murdered their beloved shepherd, George.
Richard Osman; that vicar who was in The Communards; anyone else whose book covers feature a nice cream background, black type and a singular colour. There have been so many “cosy crime” stories over the past decade it’s not surprising that their fictional solvers have had to evolve from pensioners to priests to, finally, animals. In The Sheep Detectives, the fleecy flock have to solve the murder of their own shepherd, George (Hugh Jackman), in a rural corner of England.
The sheep are hampered by their lack of opposable thumbs, and their tendency to make themselves forget bad things they have witnessed, like me after I read the first two Thursday Murder Club novels then inexplicably bought the third.
It’s very jolly and consistently amusing, with even the dimmest of the flock cleverer than inept local policeman, Officer Derry (nicely played by Nicholas Braun). Imagine if Agatha Christie wrote classic kids’ show Balamory and you’re watching it on the BBC on a Sunday night while you try to forget you’ve got school tomorrow, and that’s The Sheep Detectives vibe.
Chief clever-hooves among the sheep is Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), aided and abetted by the less bouncy Mopple (Chris O’Dowd). Mopple is the only one who cannot forget. Mopple is like the flock’s sin-eater, forced to hold on to all the bad and sad things they have witnessed, while his friends munch dandelions as if nothing has happened.
The Sheep Detectives is about more than just crime-solving though. Like most family films it’s also about loyalty, perseverance and facing your fears to do what is right. But most importantly it’s about acknowledging that living with the truth, even if painful, is better than hiding in a lie. (Though the way the world is now, I think the sheep might have been on to something.)
Despite the film’s bright and bouncy design, that message for children perhaps goes harder than many. The flock in The Sheep Detectives don’t understand that people can die and believe they themselves become clouds when their time on Earth is up. It’s not dissimilar to the euphemisms children are told when family and friends die, to lessen the blow. Then there’s pets, posthumously said to have “gone to live on a farm”. (Hang on, maybe the sheep are already dead?)
George has recently tracked down his twin son and daughter, given up for adoption as babies after their mother died in childbirth. He’s been writing to his daughter Rebecca, explaining his life and his love of sheep; in the evenings he sits outside his silver trailer in the sheep meadow, reading murder mysteries to his flock, with the over-confident Lily always quickest to work out who the murderer is.
The nearby town of Denbrook is adorable, and I haven’t seen an Anglican church that full since Elizabeth II’s funeral in Westminster Abbey. There’s probably a red phone box, ready for Emma Thompson to phone in her usual comedy turn. Before George’s death the only blot on the landscape is the flock’s own treatment of a small winter lamb, which they ostracise and bully; apart from George, no one likes a winter lamb.
All my fans when they hear me dissing Richard Osman (Photo credit: Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios © 2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved)
His flock discover George dead outside the trailer, one hand stained blue from a sheep treatment and one, oddly, green. Inside the trailer are two glasses next to a bottle of whiskey.
George’s solicitor Lydia Harbottle (Thompson), as in all good murder mysteries, holds a Will reading to all the suspects, though suspicion soon falls on George’s newly-arrived daughter Rebecca (Molly Gordon), the main beneficiary in George’s new, last minute Will. Meanwhile in a more sheepcentric subplot, the other local shepherd, Caleb Merrow (Tosin Cole) has teamed up with the butcher to sell lamb meat from his own flock.
George’s death and investigation follow many of the tropes of the murder novel world: misdirection, a clue hiding in plain sight, a gossipy English village; all topped and tailed by the Will reading and a public denouement in front of everyone as the detective explains the path that got them to the real murderer. It’s a meta-mutton-murder mystery, as the sheep and then Officer Derry absorb the rules of the game from detective novels and apply them to the story they themselves are characters in.
There are a few great jokes: the butcher counting sheep, a nonchalant chicken, an ongoing gag about neon signs.
The CGI is impressive and there’s a starry sheep voiceover cast, including Bryan Cranston and Patrick Stewart; Cranston’s Sebastian, an aloof, solitary ram with a dark carnival past, is rather moving, as is the adorable winter lamb (Tommy Birchall). Thompson is entertainingly Emma Thompson as George’s brusque solicitor, and I liked Nicholas Galitzine’s diligent, hideously-haired local reporter: he reminded me of David McCallum in The Man From U.N.C.L.E if you got ChatGPT to draw him from a website accessibility description.
Did I work out hoofdunnit? No I did not, though I consoled myself with a nice shepherd’s pie later.
Note: there is a very short end-credits scene (well, more of a voiceover). Ewe won’t miss anything if you don’t hang on for it though.
Watch The Sheep Detectives trailer below, or read my plot recap article, including the ending.
Photo credits: Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios © 2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.
The Sheep Detectives – film stills and on-set pictures
