Review – The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️

We’re right in the midst of this spring’s lambing season, and The Sheep Detectives has raised a hoof to step into the family movie arena, hoping to pick up the slack from Mario and The Magic Faraway Tree.

Its efforts are nicely bolstered by a remarkably star-studded cast. Hugh Jackman stars as George, a kindly shepherd living just outside the English village of Denbrook. Tending to his flock with great care from his caravan in the countryside, he sees each sheep and lamb for what they are – characters and lives in their own right. Each night, he reads to them, never straying far from his favourite genre – murder mysteries – and, without his ever knowing, each one listens, hanging on his every word, until, by chance, his plucky flock get their chance to crack a case of their own. There’s been a murder, and the culprit must be caught before they break away for a life on the lamb.

The colourful cast of sheep are brought to life by a who’s who of voice talent that’s hard to scoff at. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is Lily, the investigative brains of the operation; Bryan Cranston is Sebastian, something of a lone wolf (though not in sheep’s clothing – he really is a sheep); Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein has a dual role as bickering twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie and Chris O’Dowd is Mopple, the quirky, easygoing jokester who doesn’t seem to be the sharpest of the bunch. Bella Ramsey (star of The Last of Us and soon-to-be Celebrity Traitor) is Zora and among other names, Sir Patrick Stewart milks a lot out of his role as the fittingly regal Sir Richfield. Even the human side of things sees Emma Thompson  well-cast as a kooky lawyer brought out from the city, never far from her sunglasses. By all accounts, a stellar roster to play with.

‘Most of my sheep seem to spend their days either eating or thinking about eating’

And indeed, there is a good whack of fun to be had with Sheep Detectives, its central mystery getting underway at a good pace. As with any of these stories, everybody’s a suspect (baa, perhaps, the flock) and as our rabble of sleuths quickly find out, just about everybody in town has a motive. This is all based on Leonie’s Swann’s Three Bags Full, a German novel from 2005, but it’s easy to see the influence of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club as well, which took a stab at a film adaptation last summer with an equally stacked cast, swapping out deerstalker hats and peacoats for wholly unorthodox detectives. 

In rather similar fashion to that spiritual predecessor, the names behind this picture are the real draw rather than a sense of feeling entirely engrossed in an unfurling mystery. I do love a good whodunnit, but I’d wager they’re trickier to pull off on film rather than in a long-form novel, even one written with a child audience in mind. I can’t say I was thoroughly invested in the case itself, here: I took a one in seven or eight chance at guessing the killer early on and was right in my assumptions (the film couldn’t quite pull the wool over my eyes but the motive, means and opportunity all escaped me). The supporting cast of fallible human suspects play things up to fit the tone, but I did feel, at times, like we were drifting off course from Dunbrook itself towards somewhere like Royston Vasey. There is a bit of charm in that, too, though: despite all its influences, the picturesque English setting, broad-stroke characters and well-meaning, small stakes sleuthing brought back happy memories of The Famous Five.

If that was everything the film had to offer, then I might have felt a little out-off, overdosing on sickly sweetness like a man cruelly drenched in a vat of honey by a well-mannered, English gent of a Bond villain. I’m happy to report that there’s more to the narrative than that, in fact, some of what I can only assume are threads explored in greater depth over the course of the original novel do get their play over the course of these two hours. 

The flock are clearly portrayed as a family unit, yet surprisingly, they’re not without their own prejudices and problems, too, with one poor lamb shunned by the others on a simple technicality of their birth. It’s an interesting extra crease in the story, yet one that you simply couldn’t tell the tale without – it informs everything else in ways that you can’t always see coming. I’ll say no more about it, but it did a lot to keep me intrigued when the murder case itself seemed to take the back hoof. And if you’d told me earlier this year that I’d soon be writing about sheep solving murders in the countryside with Hugh Jackman, I would’ve told ewe that that was the silliest idea I’d ever herd.

BBFC: Rated PG for mild violence, threat, brief language.

The Sheep Detectives is in cinemas now.