A group of senior citizens at an elegant assisted living facility turn their attention to solving real-life cold cases instead of knitting or bird watching in The Thursday Murder Club, now streaming worldwide on Netflix. This convoluted murder mystery adapted from the 2020 Richard Osman novel is given a huge boost thanks to an impressive cast that extends beyond its central quartet, and elaborate staging and direction by Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) that turns the central location into something of a Hogwarts for senior citizens.
The Thursday Murder Club stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley as Elizabeth, Ron, and Ibrahim, respectively, core members of the titular not-so-secret society at Coopers Chase retirement village. They open the film investigating the unsolved murder of a woman in 1973—a case once investigated by former police detective Penny Gray, a member of their club who now lies comatose in the facility’s hospice wing.
As the film opens, retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft (Celia Imrie) joins the Murder Club after arriving at Coopers Chase, and she—and the audience—are given an introduction to their activities. Elizabeth is a former government agent whose husband Steven (Jonathan Pryce) suffers from the early stages of dementia, Ron is a former union leader whose celebrity son Jason (Tom Ellis) makes a splash every time he visits his dad, and Ibrahim is a former professor and psychiatrist. They each add their own unique perspective as they work through Penny’s old case files as a unique form of recreation.
But the Thursday Murder Club is about to get a taste of a not-so-cold case after Coopers Chase co-owner Tony Curran (Geoff Bell, who coincidentally starred opposite Mirren and Brosnan in the Guy Ritchie TV series MobLand) is murdered at his home. The immediate suspect is his business partner Ian Ventham (David Tennant), who wants to sell off the retirement facility, which would leave its residents without a home.
Local police—represented by DCI Chris Hudson (Daniel Mays)—don’t appear to be competent enough to solve the case. Can the Thursday Murder Club, surreptitiously working with constable Donna De Freitas (Naomi Ackie) to obtain the latest evidence, unravel the murder… and save their home?
The Thursday Murder Club is a lot more complex and convoluted than we might expect from a Netflix murder mystery targeting an older demographic; unlike the usual Agatha Christie-inspired fare, this one avoids well-worn tropes, and the audience is never able to solve the mystery for themselves ahead of the characters. In adapting Osman’s novel, screenwriters Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote are careful to only give us just enough information to follow each individual clue along with the characters.
This format ensures that the film maintains at least mild interest throughout, even though we pick up early on that all the obvious suspects must be red herrings, and we’re not given enough information to be able to come up with our own theories. But given that the final reveal is so convoluted that it takes multiple scenes of exposition to explain away, it’s a good thing the script saves it for the very end.
Mirren, Brosnan, Kingsley, and Imrie are so engaging that we would be invested in watching them sit around and have tea—which is exactly what they do for much of the movie. But Pryce, Ackie, Henry Lloyd-Hughes as a Polish handyman, and Richard E. Grant as a criminal florist, and other cast members all have key roles to play here, and help keep this lighthearted murder mystery afloat.
The Thursday Murder Club also benefits from a certain elegance that elevates it above similar Netflix fare, thanks to Columbus’ slick direction and the central Coopers Chase location, which is no ordinary retirement home but a sprawling castle estate. Filming took place at Englefield House, an Elizabethan country house and estate in Berkshire, and the impressive central location is gorgeously captured by cinematographer Don Burgess (Forrest Gump).
As the bodies pile up and skeletons are (literally) excavated from their graves, The Thursday Murder Club maintains a somewhat curious attitude towards death. That these characters are solving real-life murders as a form of recreation doesn’t always sit well with their own impending mortality; the film desperately wants us to invest in the reality these seniors face—the cold specter of death that hangs around them and those around them—while treating murders that are a degree away from them as a form of entertainment. It’s a moral complexity shared by many a true crime podcast.
Still, no one tuning in to The Thursday Murder Club will expect this level of self-reflection, and nor will they leave this film unsatisfied. This isn’t as clean a murder mystery as a Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, but it’s largely engaging, and delivers to the expectations of a Netflix adaptation of Osman’s novel about as well as can be expected. A sequel—there are now five books in Osman’s series—with the same central characters would not be unwelcome.
