The Thursday Murder Club is a group of four pensioners who live at Cooper’s Chase Retirement home that get together in their spare time to solve cold cases. But when the owner of Cooper’s Chase is struck down at his home they have a real life case to solve. 

The Thursday Murder Club is based on the 2020 novel of the same name by British game show host and comedian Richard Osman. It quickly became a sensation and there are currently four novels in total following the team of geriatric sleuths and a fifth very nearly upon us. In fact the novels are so popular that I had no less than four members of my extended family telling me how great they were and that I should read them. So my dear readers I come into this film prepared having read all four novels in the few months immediately prior to this Netflix release. 

The novels are quintessential holiday reads. Fast paced, short chapters and some convoluted puzzles with satisfying endings. They certainly would not sate hardcore crime readers but they are something you can plough through in quick time and they have some fun characters you can root for. The film however somehow manages to be incredibly insipid and bland with none of its stellar cast able to really stand out. 

Helen Mirren plays Elizabeth, the founder of the group and a wily old lady with many years of experience investigating, interrogating and manipulating. She is the definitive leader of this gang of sleuths. Ben Kingsley plays Ibrahim, an ex-psychiatrist and a man whose fastidious note taking and attention to detail help the team greatly. Pierce Brosnan plays Ron, an ex-trade unionist full of bluster and rather keen on West Ham United. And Celia Imrie plays Joyce, the newest member of the team and an ex-nurse who can assist with medical information. The casting of this group is absolutely spot on and you can read the books with these actors in mind and find it to be a perfect fit. I certainly did as I was reading. 

There are also an array of supporting characters that are important to the plot line (and future stories). The police duo of Donna de Freitas (Naomi Ackie) and Chris Hudson (Daniel Mays) who the team befriend. Elizabeth’s husband Stephen who is slowly losing his mind to dementia is played wonderfully by Jonathan Pryce who has given a very similar performance in the superb “Slow Horses” on Apple TV. The helpful handyman Bogdan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), Ron’s son and ex-fighter Jason (Tom Ellis), property baron Ian Ventham (David Tenant) and scary gangland kingpin Bobby Tanner (Richard E. Grant). 

The result should be a glorious and breezy British whodunit with its plethora of English actors. But frankly it is all a bit dull. The only actor who really stuck out for me was Richard E. Grant and that was simply because he felt miscast and was rather terrible at being a scary gangster. Everyone else seems well cast and capable but nothing really creates any excitement. 

The sets and filming techniques give the whole production a rather bright and Sunday evening television feel to them. There are no real red herrings to consider as the plot unfolds or any real means to guess the killer/s thanks to some changes made to the original book either. 

So let us discuss the changes. Of course books have to be edited in some manner to make their way to the screen and for me there is only really one controversial change. They have excised a couple of characters completely and drastically cut back the backstories of others, which I assume was required from a time and pacing point of view. The only real issue here is that the key characters they did this for added extra suspects that you might have considered as true contenders for the crimes! But, and I want to say this in a non spoiler manner, they have changed one specific event and outcome which really changes an important secondary character that will need some manoeuvring around if they are to continue to adapt the books to films. Something that really baffled me as to why they would want to make that change. 

Overall then the outcome is disappointingly insipid. The holiday page turner becoming something of nothing. But there is some enjoyment to be had in the clever casting and this means there is still possibilities for future adaptations. 

Perhaps watching it on a lazy Sunday afternoon with no expectations is exactly what they were aiming for?