The Sheep Detectives is a warm, woolly, and wonderfully weird treat.

Rating: ★★★½

If you had “Hugh Jackman leads a flock of crime-solving sheep” on your 2026 cinema bingo card, congratulations—you’ve just won the jackpot. The Sheep Detectives is a delightfully eccentric cross between the sophisticated deduction of Knives Out and the silent-comedy, stop-motion charm of Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep. This is a cosy crime caper that manages to be both high-brow and laugh-out-loud funny.

The Sheep Detectives is a pastoral whodunnit that follows George Hardy (Hugh Jackman), a gentle shepherd who spends his evenings reading classic murder mystery novels to his flock. He assumes they just like the sound of his voice. In reality, the sheep are hanging on every word, honing their own deductive skills.

When George is found dead under mysterious circumstances, the local police led by a bumbling but well-meaning officer (Nicholas Braun) are stumped. It’s up to the sheep to leave the safety of their meadow, enter the human world and use the tropes they’ve learned from George’s books to find the killer.

It is a delightful murder mystery that plays with the "locked-gate" format, complete with red herrings, suspicious local business tycoons, and a very shifty butcher.

While Jackman is charming and, oddly only briefly in the film, the voice cast is the real standout:

Julia Louis-Dreyfus leads the flock with a sharp, neurotic wit as the de facto leader, Lily. Bryan Cranston is surprisingly moving as Sebastian, the "black sheep" of the group with a tragic past. Also featured are Bella Rmasey and Patrick Stewart. As for the other humans, Emma Thompson delivers her usual spiky, scene-stealing performance as George's lawyer, Lydia Harbottle. Nicholas Braun is the policeman who slowly realizes the sheep are actually more competent than he is.

The film’s intelligence is no accident. It was written by Craig Mazin, the powerhouse writer behind one of the best TV mini-series ever written, Chernobyl and the emotional The Last of Us. While this is a far cry from the post-apocalypse of the latter, Mazin brings that same depth and care to the script, adapting Leonie Swann’s bestseller "Three Bags Full" with a perfect balance of humour and philosophy. Directed by Kyle Balda (Despicable Me, Minions), the film has a vibrant, kinetic energy that keeps the 109-minute runtime moving at a brisk clip.

The Sheep Detectives is a rare breed: a family film that doesn't talk down to its audience. While it occasionally leans a bit hard into animal puns (the "Shears Out" joke is a bit on the nose), the emotional core is genuinely touching. Come for "Huge Action" as the shepherd, and stay for the sheep who are better at solving crimes than Benoit Blanc. It’s a warm, woolly, and wonderfully weird treat.