On August 28, on the Netflix service came out a detective film called The Thursday Murder Club, based on the debut bestselling novel of the same name by the English TV presenter Richard Osman in 2020. The work is the first of five (the new, fifth book, Impossible Happiness, is due out next month) in The Thursday Murder Club book series. A whole galaxy of respected star veterans gathered on the set, but whether their mere presence in the frame is enough to consider the film a success is discussed in the review below.
Genre crime comedy, detective
Director Chris Columbus
Starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, Naomi Aki, Tom Ellis, Richard E. Grant
Premiere Netflix
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb
At the luxurious Cooper Chase retirement estate, four residents — retired spy Elizabeth Best, former trade union leader and ardent West Ham United fan Ron Ritchie, ex-psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif, and retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft with outstanding culinary skills — organized the so-called “The Thursday Murder Club.” Still full of energy, the retirees signed up as amateur detectives and are trying to solve old crimes, including the murder of a woman who jumped out of a window on May 11, 1973.
But the club members will soon have to turn their attention to much more recent crimes when the current manager of Cooper Chase, Tony Curran, is found dead. He is followed a short time later by another gentleman associated with the luxury real estate. Numerous people are suspected, and even Ron’s son seems to have something to do with the case. Be that as it may, the aging Chris Columbus’ Fantastic Four have their work cut out for them if they are to get to the truth.
Richard Osman’s bestselling novel, The Thursday Murder Club, was universally recognized as a cozy mystery. That is, the literary genre where a nice old lady from some English village, who is fond of knitting and tending a small garden, could easily expose a criminal. Miss Marple in the works of Agatha Christie is an archetypal, canonical image of the protagonist in a cozy detective story.
The Thursday Murder Club offers a whole team of such pleasant old men, and this is its main strength. The film gravitates toward good old detective series originally from Foggy Albion, and moreover, it resembles a show pilot rather than a full-fledged movie.
And this is still not enough to claim sincere admiration in 2025. Especially from experienced viewers. “Nice” is definitely the epithet the movie deserves. Again, considering the cast, the factor of cute characters of respectable age, light humor and generally attractive setting. But as for “interesting” — there are already questions.
The problem is that there’s nothing more to it than a “cute little thing”. The detective intrigue is barely able to captivate. The characters are outlined in too broad strokes. The denouement is not surprising. It’s like the cake that one of the local heroines likes to bake: it looks great, but it tastes like something vague and bland. A beautiful shell with an empty interior. An uncomplicated, boring detective story with no thrill or tension. A light retirement outing where the veterans performed in complete relaxation, purely on experience. A nice disposable trinket that wants to seem much wittier than it really is.
Probably, such material would feel more comfortable in the format of a miniseries, rather than in the tight pants of a 2-hour feature.
It would have been possible to better reveal all the members of the club, to make the murder investigations of the past and present equally interesting, and to pay more attention to dramatic moments, such as the storyline of Elizabeth’s terminally ill friend or her husband Stephen (played by the brilliant Jonathan Pryce). Stephen suffers from dementia. Just look at Only Murders in the Building with those dinosaurs in the role of newly minted detectives Steve Martin and Martin Short — the high ratings and longevity of the show (the fifth season premieres in more than a week) look telling.
Of course, the local stars in the frame have enough charisma to fill the narrative lethargy and superficiality with pleasant jokes and lighthearted wisecracks.
Or Helen Mirren, who symbolically allows us to joke about her resemblance to Queen Elizabeth IIor a deliberately unkempt Pierce Brosnan without a front tooth, but with a beer belly and food residue on his T-shirt and beard — it’s funny. Jeff Bell also appears in the frame, it seems as if all three of them had just finished a shift on the set “MobLand” immediately came to work here.
You should watch The Thursday Murder Club if you are fond of old British detectives and the frivolous pleasantness of the form is more important to you than the content or the unpredictable detective component itself. Otherwise, before you know it, you’ll be succumbing to a ritual typical of the elderly — a sound sleep in front of the still-running TV.
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Cуб'єкт у сфері онлайн-медіа; ідентифікатор медіа - R40-06029.