“Do you know what humans call stupid people who can't think for themselves?” one sheep pointedly asks another in director Kyle Balda’s The Sheep Detectives.
The other sheep, a bit dim, responds: “Ducks?”
A murder mystery that casts a flock of talking sheep in the Hercule Poirot role sounds like a mildly diverting kids’ cartoon from one of Disney’s less inspired eras. And yet, my interest was piqued when I saw the script came from Craig Mazin, who’s been delivering television wonders like Chernobyl and The Last of Us. Working off Leonie Swann’s hit novel, Mazin turns this cutesy premise into a profoundly moving meditation on memory, belonging, and mortality. Throw in a game voice cast and a juicy puzzle and you’ve got Babe meets Knives Out, with all the wit, charm, and twists those comparisons invite. It’s a real contender for this year’s biggest surprise. As it turns out, 2026's best, funniest tearjerker about an unlikely hero forging an alliance with another species to suss out how to save the day isn't Project Hail Mary.
2026's best, funniest tearjerker about an unlikely hero forging an alliance with another species to suss out how to save the day isn't Project Hail Mary.
George Hardy is a reclusive shepherd living in the hills outside Denbrook. Played with pastoral warmth by Hugh Jackman, he spends his evenings reading murder mysteries to his flock. “I like to pretend that they follow along,” he muses. “But they’re only sheep.”
Little does he know that his flock is actually hanging onto every word. Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, fantastic) always cracks the case before the last chapter, much to the amazement of the aristocratic Sir Ritchfield (Patrick Stewart), the prissy Cloud (Regina Hall), the kindly Mopple (Chris O’Dowd), and other members of George’s flock. The film unspools gently, introducing us to George’s flock and Denbrook’s townspeople with savvy, sowing tiny clues with Agatha Christie’s own precision. By the time George turns up dead, the viewers already have a handle on a few directions the case could turn—as do the sheep, who set about finding endless ways to put the hapless officer Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun) on the right track.
The humans aren’t sure what to make of the case, but the sheep have heard enough of George’s whodunnits to apply the conventions of the genre to this real-life murder mystery. It’s great fun watching sheep figure out how to do rudimentary forensics, all cast across a gorgeous British backdrop of lush greens and blue skies. Visual effects studio Framestore did marvelous work rendering our sheep protagonists, who look realistic enough to shear, while still emoting and expressing toe-to-toe with their human co-stars. When Lily, Mottle, or any of the other sheep screw their face up in concentration or light up with inspiration, it’s a special effect that’s actually special and makes the story’s emotional beats legible. In an age when so much CGI pushes viewers away from fully sinking into a movie’s world—think of the sludgy gray-green dinosaurs in 2025’s Jurassic World: Rebirth—The Sheep Detectives’ animation only draws you further into the story, mystery and all.
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And the mystery is largely a hook to hang on a much deeper, sadder, and ultimately more sublime narrative about navigating loss. George’s death is truly heartbreaking, and Lily and the rest of the flock only have one way to deal with grief: forgetting. As it turns out, sheep are able to make themselves forget painful times in their lives, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style, just by counting to three. And right as they’re about to deliberately forget George and erase the hurt of his passing, a mysterious, curmudgeonly old ram named Sebastian (Bryan Cranston) shows up, urging them to keep George’s memory alive as a way to honor his life and seek justice for his death.
We learn this flock of sheep has erased every previous death from their memory (they believe sheep turn into clouds instead of dying), which is one of the ways they maintain their idyllic community. Another way is by isolating sheep born outside of summer from their community, including a tiny young sheep known only as the “winter lamb,” voiced with such distressingly adorable sadness by newcomer Tommy Birchall that people in my audience were audibly gasping in horror every time the flock bullied him away. The fact that this winter lamb was both beloved by George and witness to a key clue does not sway Lily and the others from their rigid beliefs about who belongs and who doesn’t. But then, convention gets upended by the surprise arrival of Rebecca (Molly Gordon), an American girl who claims to be George’s long-lost daughter and has a will in the form of a riddle.
If you’re getting the sense that this shepherd seems to be imbued with nigh-mythic qualities, then you’re operating on The Sheep Detectives’ level. The movie is aware that shepherds have spiritual resonance (Sebastian explains that God is an invisible shepherd who is also a lamb made out of bread that people eat every week. I’ve heard worse descriptions) and Jackman is frequently framed in messianic poses, even acting out a version of Jesus’ famed parable about rescuing a lost sheep. It’s nice to see a movie that utilizes biblical reference less as Easter eggs and more as a substantive layer of the story. But The Sheep Detectives’ theology goes deeper than good shepherds.
Again and again, the sheep detectives are faced with the temptation to forget, to deploy some selective amnesia to blot out their grief and turn to convenient myths instead of a difficult reality. This is a common enough practice among people, for whom the past can be so unpleasant. But we are also seeing this tendency across systems and cultures, as our nation bans books, outlaws demonstrations, and erases laws that violate our sense of complacency. Forgetting bad things so that we can rewrite reality with a rosier fiction is not just for sheep, it seems. As God tells Jeremiah, “they dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious” (6:14). And, just like with Lily and her friends, the casualty of this forgetting can be justice itself.
In 1 Samuel, the Israelites build a stone monument to mark their defeat of the Philistines. They call this monument Ebenezer (“stone of help,”) as Samuel declares, “thus far, the Lord has helped us” (7:12). It’s a lovely reminder that the act of remembering is not always a naturally occurring phenomenon. Monuments, books, and memorials are all helpful but, in a pinch, the memories themselves will do. As the psalmist writes, “I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.” (143:5).
It turns out that justice sits on the other side of memory and that learning to live with loss is the secret to keeping our loved ones alive. Humans may call stupid people who can’t think for themselves “sheep,” but The Sheep Detectives understands that the impulse to look away from the truth is all too human. So is the need for a good shepherd.
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