Every night a shepherd reads aloud a murder mystery, pretending his sheep can understand. When he is found dead, the sheep realize at once that it was a murder and think they know everything about how to go about solving it.

I love a good mystery, and while the setup for this one is wafer-thin, the idea of a flock of sheep trying to solve the murder of their shepherd is certainly a new take on some tired tropes. It doesn’t keep those tropes from appearing, but the movie is light and fluffy enough it almost doesn’t matter.

Hugh Jackman is George Hardy, a shepherd in a small English town, who reads mysteries to his flock every night until they find his body one morning. The local police officer (who is the entire department really) is a complete buffoon (Nicholas Braun, at his doofy best), so the sheep in George’s flock take it upon themselves to the solve the crime from a list of suspects of locals and visitors: Coleth Hill, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Hong Chau, Molly Gordon, Tosin Cole. Nicholas Galitzine and Emma Thompson round out the cast as a reporter and George’s lawyer respectively.

The vocal work of the sheep is superb, led by national treasure Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and including Brett Goldstein, Patrick Stewart, Regina Hall, Bella Ramsey, Chris O’Dowd, Rhys Darby and Bryan Cranston.

The Sheep Detectives is utterly charming and sweet but also as light and deep as a cloud. You’ll probably smile throughout even as fades away as fast at the credits roll.

Jonathan’s grade – B-