Richard Osman’s phenomenal bestseller from 2020 was an ingenious, accessible, good-natured book, which helped rebrand the English detective novel as “cosy crime”, started a celeb-copycat publishing trend and, being about four elderly people in a retirement community rising above ageist condescension to solve crimes, spoke eloquently to the shut-in frustrations and escapist yearnings of the Covid age.
Now it has been adapted as a funny and likable, if slightly bland, comedy-drama for Netflix, which as one character amusingly and pre-emptively comments, feels just like a Sunday teatime TV crime drama. There is nothing new about these nostalgist leanings: Agatha Christie has after all been a solid film and TV export for more than half a century. Screenwriters Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote adapt the novel and director Chris Columbus robustly delivers the C-major chords of mainstream entertainment. The result is some undemanding enjoyment, even if the film does appear finally to be saying something rather bold, even controversial, on the subject of assisted dying.
The scene is Coopers Chase, a retirement facility that looks like a gigantic stately home grand enough to rival Downton Abbey; some of the exteriors were filmed at Englefield Estate in Berkshire. Inhabitants are assigned huge sets of panelled rooms – what must the fees at such an extraordinary place be? The clientele have all sorts of hobbies, but the most remarkable is that of the Thursday Murder Club. This comprises former MI6 chief Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), ex-trade unionist Ron (Pierce Brosnan), retired psychiatrist Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley) and former nurse Joyce (Celia Imrie), whose own obsession with baking absurdly lavish cakes brings some Bake-Off energy to the picturesque tale. They meet in the jigsaw room every week to discuss unsolved crimes, supplied to them by Elizabeth’s friend, a retired police officer now in the palliative care wing.
Elizabeth’s husband Stephen (Jonathan Pryce) has dementia and is another resident of Coopers Chase; Elizabeth has apparently moved there as well to be with him and she is as vigorous and hale and hearty as her TMC pals. When their evil landlord Ian Ventham (David Tennant) unveils unspeakable plans to redevelop the place as luxury flats, this sets in train violent and mysterious events involving his business partners Tony Curran (Geoff Bell) and Bobby Tanner (Richard E Grant). These need to be investigated by local coppers DCI Chris Hudson (Daniel Mays), an officer with a serious chocolate habit, and WPC Donna de Freitas (Naomi Ackie). But the police won’t get anywhere without the help of the Thursday Murder Club, whose leader Elizabeth has icily forbidden use of the word “feisty” to describe them.
There’s a fair bit to enjoy here, with the club sometimes resembling a kind of senior-citizen X-Men group whose collective superpower is invisibility; old people can do things without people noticing them. We also get some self-aware gags: Helen Mirren’s character at one stage walks in and her husband says that she looks “just like the queen” – that is, Queen Elizabeth, who Mirren portrayed in The Queen. Yet when the plot has to accelerate to the point of pure daftness in its final act, the movie resembles not so much a Sunday night crime serial, but a weekday afternoon kids’ TV show. Nothing necessarily wrong with that of course. The keynote is fun.
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