The Sheep Detectives

We resisted the whole idea of  The Sheep Detectives until a good word-of-mouth recommendation came in … that’s usually the best indicator that you might like something. Kyle Balda’s film is a combination of live-action & CGI animation, with anthropomorphosed sheep that talk, athough only among themselves. The animation is meant to produce photo-real sheep, that are tweaked to be clean, fluffy, and extra-adorable. Some initial resentment had to clear before I got into the right spirit. The resentment came with a trio of lambs that hop and cavort about, much too much like happy little cartoon characters.

But it took only a minute or two to realize that real-life lambs behave exactly like silly cartoon characters — when hopping around they look unreal, like bouncy wind-up toys. Movie animators have been copying their antics since the silent days of Farmer Alfafa.

To fit in with the style of the show the photo-real sheep have been made to look their best, ready to compete at the County Fair. The story is something of a spoof on TV murder mysteries that are always set in a photogenic English village populated exclusively by amusing people. These wholesome, multi-racial and polite places are apparently plagued with constant slayings.

Fill this part-comedy formula with some wit and wisdom and you’ve got something. About ten minutes in our resistance faded, and enough charm surfaced to keep me watching. The human characters can skew a bit dumb, but the sheep side of the story is a grabber. A nice kind of sentimentality soon takes the forefront, for both animals and humans.

As a mystery, it’s like any TV show — a confection of red-herring characters and contradictory clues. And I can’t say I became involved with any of them. But the filmmakers’ orchestration of those sheep characters works well. The original story material was a German book, that brings in a subversive kind of social commentary. Yep, the sheep are stupid … but there are smart ones, too. George Orwell’s Napoleon painted on the wall of the barn that ‘Some sheep are equally more stupid than other sheep, and less equally stupid than some humans.” I may not have that quote exactly right.

In general, the animals are looking out for the common good. Almost all of the humans are really only looking out for themselves.

In a lovely green countryside, the shepherd George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) tends his beloved sheep. As a capper on the tender loving care, George reads them murder mysteries every night. These sheep talk to each other whenever they’re alone … either that, or the soundtrack translates their normal bleating. A smart ewe named Lily (voice: Julia Louis-Dreyfus) figures out the crimes in the paperback novels.

But Lily is just as dumb as the rest of the flock when it comes to processing troubling concepts. When confronted by news or a fact that is too upsetting, the flock usually opts to actively forget it. It works like a charm: all the sheep stay ignorant and happy. The flock has never met the French sheep residing on a nearby pasture. They cruelly discriminate against ‘Winter lambs.’  A tiny nameless lamb ostracised from the flock (voice: Tommy Birchall) is picked on by this year’s three Spring lambs.

George Hardy’s flock is lucky in that it are being raised for wool, not meat; they have no idea that other sheep are sold to butchers. The flock remains equally in denial about death, and have invented a myth that when a sheep ‘goes away,’ it has turned into a cloud. Clouds are nice and fluffy, and look happy up in the sky. Lily’s friend Mopple (voice: Chris O’Dowd) knows the truth about death, but keeps it to himself. He pretends to believe the cloud myth just for the sake of getting along.

When a murder occurs, the town’s not-too-bright Officer Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun) hasn’t a clue as to how to proceed. The visiting reporter Eliot (Nicholas Galitzine) helps gather evidence that points to a suspect. After the arrest is made Lily the Ewe gets involved, and starts bringing clues to Tim’s attention.

The list of suspects includes most of the cast. Competitive shepherd Caleb Merrow (Tosin Cole) and the local butcher Ham Gilyard (Conleth Hill) are united in a shady business agreement. Reverend Hillcoate (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) has been getting big, unexplained cash payments. Young Rebecca Hampstead (Molly Gordon) lies about snooping around the pastures. The lawyer Lydia Harbottle (Emma Thompson) seems much too eager to see justice done swiftly. Shopkeeper Beth Pennock (Hong Chau) is secretly in love with George, and has even hidden some of his letters.

Only a couple of the sheep can be called intelligent, but it is surprising how quickly we know which sheep is which — besides Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Chris O’Dowd, others are voiced by Patrick Stewart, Bryan Cranston, and even Laraine Newman.

What keeps The Sheep Detective from becoming insufferably Twee is that touch of social comment. The flock’s ‘sheeplike’ qualities are not idealized. They value peace and harmony, and look for conformity in all policies. They want the whole flock to subscribe to the samef ignorant traditions, such as rejecting Winter lambs. As they feel weak an insecure, they rally around Alpha Sheep like Lily, letting her do all the thinking.

Collectively they’re stupid, but as individuals they can make good decisions. 

That setup is good because we can think, “aha, it’s a microcosm for bad human politics.” It’s the kind of moral lesson we prefer, the kind that preaches no specific line of political thought. Meanwhile, much of what we see on the human side of the drama verges on cartoonish fantasy, some of which can be a little trying. The good-hearted Officer Tim is frequently too clueless even for this fantasy.

It certainly isn’t after realism. Anyone who’s gotten up close with sheep not scrubbed and shampooed for a petting zoo will agree … normal movies don’t reproduce smells. 

Hugh Jackman is endearingly grumpy, and the care he takes with his beloved flock makes a big impression. The beloved Emma Thompson looks sensational. She prevents her ‘nervy solicitor’ character from overpowering the less demonstrative actors. The other cast members are fine, with characterizations that would fit in just fine in any generic Brit TV mystery show, like Father Brown. The reporter character feels more appropriate for a broader farce. And why does he sometime seem to be channeling Troy Donohue?

Most of the rewards come from watching the wooly side of the cast list. The jokes aren’t all winners, but a corny gag about ‘counting sheep’ made me laugh out loud. The tradition of depicting farm animals as lovingly cared for in a paradisical valley is definitely a symptom of a culture in denial. But animal fantasies have their place. When Rebecca Hampstead leads a flock of French woolies over a hill, it reminded me of the “The World is a Circle” song in the remake of  Lost Horizon. There is no song and no Liv Ullmann, but the effect is better here.  →

We wonder if earlier drafts was more of a farce, with more spoofery of TV mystery tropes. An isolated gag with the little town’s neon signs comes off as a funny inside joke. It sneaks through in the background, like the earlier ‘counting sheep’ gag. But in general the show doesn’t laugh at itself in that way.

We’re told that the multi-talented director Kyle Balda’s roots go back to ILM and Pixar and huge hits like Minions. This is said to be his first live-action show. It fully succeeds in making us forget what’s real and what’s not. We don’t fixate on how the real actors and pixel-animals are interacting. Of the three successful main producers Eric Feller has the most impressive filmography — Fellner served in key production positions on films by Alex Cox, The Coens and Edgar Wright. He’s a producer on the fascinating  Last Night in Soho, so he’s already won my vote.