Crew
Director – Kyle Balda, Screenplay – Craig Mazin, Based on the Novel Glennkill/Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story (2005) by Leonie Swann, Producers – Tim Bevan, Lindsay Doran & Eric Fellner, Photography – George Steel, Music – Christophe Beck, Visual Effects Supervisor – Graham Page, Visual Effects – Big Flick Rentals 2.0 & Framestore (Supervisor – Oliver Armstrong, Christian Kaestner & Josh Simmonds), Special Effects Supervisor – Mark Holt, Production Design – Suzie Davies. Production Company – Working Title/Three Strange Angels.
Cast
Hugh Jackman (George Hardy), Nicholas Braun (Officer Tim Derby), Molly Gordon (Rebecca Hampstead), Nicholas Galitzine (Elliot Matthews), Emma Thompson (Lydia Harbottle), Hong Chau (Beth Pennock), Tosin Cole (Caleb Merrow), Conleith Hill (Ham Gilyard), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Reverend Hillcoate), Mandeep Dhillon (Postman Jo)
Voices
Julia-Louis Dreyfus (Lily), Bryan Cranston (Sebastian), Chris O’Dowd (Mopple), Patrick Stewart (Sir Ritchfield), Brett Goldstein (Ronnie/Reggie), Rhys Darby (Wool-Eyes), Tommy Birchall (The Winter Lamb), Regina Hall (Cloud), Bella Ramsey (Zora), Aroop Shergill (Daisy), Jasper Ambrose (Oliver), Ishi Agrawal (Pickles)
Plot
Shepherd George Hardy tends his sheep on a farm in the tiny English village of Denbrook. Every night he reads to them from his favourite detective stories. One morning, the sheep wake up to find George lying dead in front of his caravan. They come to the realisation that he has been murdered. Lily, the most intelligent sheep in the world, decides they must employ what they have learned from the detective stories and solve his murder. The murder is also investigated by the wet-eared town police officer Tim Derby who brings together the suspects. These include Rebecca Hampstead, George’s estranged daughter, who has just arrived in town. The sheep are able to see key clues that Tim misses and try to aid the investigation.
The Sheep Detectives is an adaptation of Glennkill (2005), the first novel by German writer Leonie Swann. This was successfully translated into English as Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story. Swann has written a follow-up novel with Garou/Big Bad Wool (2025).
The film version is directed Kyle Balda, a former Pixar and DreamWorks animator who previously co-directed Illumination’s The Lorax (2012), Minions (2015), Despicable Me 3 (2017) and Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022). The film is produced by UK’s Working Title and executive produced by Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, the directors behind The Lego Movie (2014) and Project Hail Mary (2026), among others. The script comes from Craig Mazin, the former comedy writer known for the award-winning mini-series Chernobyl (2019) and the acclaimed post-apocalyptic series The Last of Us (2023- ).
Before sitting down to watch The Sheep Detectives, you do a double-take at what a wacky concept it is – the idea of a flock of sheep coming together to solve the murder of their shepherd. This has an undeniable appeal. The film that you are immediately reminded of is Babe (1995), a groundbreaking work in its day that was set amongst the anthropomorphic animals of a farm under their kindly human owner. There was no mystery aspect there but the genteel anthropomorphised depiction of the lives of the farm animals is very similar. Both also are live-action treatments of a story that could easily have been handled as animation with both films using a mix of CGI and animatronics to bring the animals to life. The effects here are extremely accomplished and naturalistic.
The Sheep Detectives has enormous charms. What I liked about it is where it does the same things that Babe did and shows the world as it would be through the eyes of sheep. Here we get ideas about how dead sheep depart and go on to live as the clouds; a peculiar form of amnesia where the sheep are able to willingly blank events from memory; the trauma-inducing problems associated in crossing the road from the familiar territory of the field (which comes with a wry throwaway joke about a chicken crossing the road).
It is also a film not afraid to get dark as the best scenes in Babe did. There is a fine scene where the sheep venturing into the neighbouring field to discover the butchery operation and the realisation that they are intended as meat by the new prospective owners, followed by the pursuit by the dogs and attempts to deal with a death of one of the flock with their amnesia. It is a very well written scene. And of course the eventual solving of the actual mystery threads together with an appealing satisfaction.
The scenes set among the humans tend towards more broad comedy. I would far rather the film have dropped these and taken the sheep’s perspective the entire way through, although that would have made for a different film. That said, of the human scenes Nicholas Braun – Greg from tv’s Succession (2018-23) – is perfectly charming as the wet-behind-the-ears police officer who gradually stumbles his way into competence. You are also quite impressed by the high-profile cast that the film manages to bring together, including no less than Patrick Stewart, Bryan Cranston and Julia-Louis Dreyfus among those voicing the sheep. The great Emma Thompson enters the film like a force of nature and sweeps through owning every scene she is in.
Trailer here