‘The Sheep Detectives’ is very much in the vein of ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ – only with sheep instead of Helen Mirren. Set in a fictional British town, the film follows a shepherd, played by Hugh Jackman, who reads murder mystery stories to his flock every evening. When he is unexpectedly murdered, the sheep effectively take over from the local police in trying to solve the case themselves.

I initially assumed this would be aimed squarely at children, but it’s actually more like a cross between ‘Babe’ and ‘Knives Out’. Beneath the whimsy and talking animals, there are some surprisingly moving and rather profound reflections on death, grief and even the possibility of an afterlife. In that sense, this sheep-based detective story turns out to be existentially richer than you might expect.

What makes it work is its quirky tone and the seamless integration of the sheep into the real world around them. The film never overexplains its premise – we simply accept that these animals think, reason and investigate. And in an era where we’ve seen endless reinventions of classic detective stories, including Kenneth Branagh’s reworking of Hercule Poirot, there’s something oddly refreshing about a woolly detective yarn.

But what stayed with me most was the film’s meditation on mortality. I genuinely wasn’t expecting it to lean so heavily into questions about death and loss, yet it does so with surprising sincerity and emotional intelligence. What could have been a lightweight children’s caper becomes something far more thoughtful and unexpectedly touching.