The Sheep Detectives

Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and George (Hugh Jackman) in "The Sheep Detectives." Amazon MGM photo via IMDb.com

Showing my age, I’ve become fond of British whodunnits on PBS. So the end of “Grantchester” along with summer recess of “Patience” produced a bit of a funk.

Luckily a woolly posse arrived to pick up the slack.

Now available on Prime Video, the peculiarly titled, family-friendly crime comedy “The Sheep Detectives” is unexpectedly touching, not to mention, great fun.

Reminiscent of the groundbreaking “Babe,” most of the cast members have four legs and are computer-generated. A stellar ensemble led by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart, Bryan Cranston  and Brett Goldstein provide their voices.

Hugh Jackman leads the actual humans on screen, playing shepherd George. From his oh-so-cozy caravan (that’s British for Airstream) parked in their meadow, George is utterly devoted to his flock. He turns out to be a bloomin’ genius, too, and more than a little prescient as the story unfolds. 

A curmudgeonly side also emerges to temper the saintliness, but it doesn’t matter all that much since, for a good part of the movie George is, uh, dead. 

It falls to the sheep – with a little help from local law enforcement (a bumbling Nicholas Braun) – to figure out how and why George wound up in that condition.

Kyle Balda directs from a script by Craig Mazin and Leonie Swann from Swann’s best-selling German novel “Three Bags Full.” The screen adaptation is a product of something in precious short supply these days: whimsy. The suspension of disbelief begins the moment you first read the title.

With an eccentric little English village nearby, there’s an underlying current of kindness to temper the sharper edges in the storyline.  Its tone is reminiscent of “Ted Lasso,” which returned to Apple TV+ this month, not a moment too soon for our hope-starved times.

The labor-of-love aspect of “The Sheep Detectives” may have been what attracted Emma Thompson to the project. Having members of British nobility in the cast (she’s a Dame, Patrick Stewart is a Sir) adds some weighty bona fides to to the enthusiasm of some of their lesser-known co-stars.

“The Sheep Detectives’” comedy is gentle rather than rollicking, and can’t entirely escape a certain sadness. In fact, the script takes on themes of death, denial, timidity and social ostracism with sensitivity for its youngest viewers. The fictions the sheep create to escape painful emotions provide a great opening for meaningful conversations between parents and kids.

But the emotions are just as rich for older audiences. The movie is modest, not overbearing. It’s  a sleeper, a surprise. I put it on the kitchen TV to keep me company as I washed the dishes. An hour and a half later, the final credits rolled. 

Without noticing, I had been entirely enthralled. Now the spell was coming to an end. Happily, despite the mist blurring my vision.