Richard Osman\u2019s The Thursday Murder Club, which is set in a retirement village and features pensioners solving murders, was a publishing sensation. (There are now four books in the series, with combined sales of more than ten million copies.) I\u2019ve never read it. \u2018Cosy crime\u2019, as it\u2019s called, is either your bag or it isn\u2019t. This adaptation, however, feels exactly like the book that I haven\u2019t and would never read. I hope Mr Osman et al. will take this as praise. In other words, the film knows what it is doing, who it is for, and fans will, I\u2019m convinced, be delighted.<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s reminiscent of Enid Blyton\u2019s The Famous Five, but at the opposite end of the age spectrum<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It\u2019s not cinematic. It\u2019s a Netflix production and will be in theatres for a week before landing on the streamer on 28 August. It could easily be a TV Christmas special. That said, it\u2019s certainly not been made on the cheap. Produced by Steven Spielberg\u2019s company and directed by Chris Columbus (Mrs Doubtfire, the first two Harry Potter films), it has so much star power that if, God forbid, something calamitous had happened as the cast were being bussed to set, the whole top tier of British acting would have been wiped out. (Only Judi Dench \u2013 who wasn\u2019t cast for whatever reason \u2013 would be left to hold the fort.)<\/p>\n
Our four retirees are: Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), a one-time spy; Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), a retired psychiatrist; Joyce (Celia Imrie), an ex-nurse; and Ron (Pierce Brosnan) known as \u2018Red Ron\u2019 from his days as a fiery trade union leader. Coopers Chase Retirement Village is the White Lotus of retirement homes. It must cost a bomb. Residents are housed in multi-roomed apartments and have access to vast grounds, swimming pools, an archery range, llamas, even a wine menu at lunch. (What was \u2018Red Ron\u2019 doing here and how could he afford it, I wondered. If he had headed your trade union back in the day, I would have checked the financials for the time he was in office.)<\/p>\n
These four prefer police-autopsy reports to intermediate knitting and meet every week in \u2018the jigsaw room\u2019 to solve cold-case murders. (The group was started by Penny, a retired police detective who had access to files but she\u2019s now in the hospice wing.) As we join the action there are tensions afoot. Ian Ventham (David Tennant), the village\u2019s rapacious developer, wants to raze the village to the ground and build luxury flats. (Hang on, isn\u2019t it already luxury flats?) He is in partnership with a builder, Tony Curran (Geoff Bell). First, Curran is murdered and then Ventham. So whodunnit? The four investigate along with Stephen (Jonathan Pryce), Elizabeth\u2019s husband who is slipping into dementia but still has moments of astuteness (the pair are very touching). It\u2019s reminiscent of Enid Blyton\u2019s The Famous Five, but at the opposite end of the age spectrum, and minus Timmy the dog.<\/p>\n
The mechanics of the plot \u2013 which also throws Daniel Mays into the mix, and Richard E. Grant \u2013 need not detain us, and I wish the film hadn\u2019t been as detained by them either. It eats into the time in which we could simply be hanging out with the characters while enjoying their quirks and admiring Joyce\u2019s cakes. (Her four-layer lemon drizzle looks dreamy.) I can see why the books are so successful. It\u2019s not patronising. These are all interesting people who have led interesting lives and who, given the opportunity, are fully capable of running rings round the police. It could have been more playful but, on the other hand, it\u2019s not every day you get to witness Brosnan bouncing through an aqua-aerobics class.<\/p>\n
Columbus doesn\u2019t introduce much suspense or tension. And the cast\u2019s talent is barely made use of. But, overall, it\u2019s a loving salute to an old-fashioned kind of storytelling \u2013 and a book that I\u2019ll never read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Osman\u2019s The Thursday Murder Club, which is set in a retirement village and features pensioners solving murders,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[14171,359,14172,18,117,597,7390,19,17,7392,14168],"class_list":{"0":"post-17012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-ben-kingsley","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-celia-imrie","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-film","14":"tag-helen-mirren","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-pierce-brosnan","18":"tag-richard-osman"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}