The Thursday Murder Club review: a gorgeous, best-of-British romp

There is something profoundly joyous about watching The Thursday Murder Club. Is it the comforting sense of Chris Columbus’ directorial hand on the wheel? The warm, yellow haze that seems to suffuse everything?

Perhaps it’s just the feeling of watching Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie work their magic, amid a rogue’s gallery of excellent British actors. It says something when David Tennant’s name isn’t even given top billing – or indeed Richard E. Grant’s.

This adaptation of Richard Osman’s best-selling book, of course, tells the story of a group of four pensioners who live in the implausibly glam retirement home of Cooper’s Chase.

There’s proper American idealism syndrome going on here – that, or all the inhabitants are stinking rich. There are llamas frolicking on the lawn, life drawing classes, all the interiors seem to have been decorated by Kit Kemp, and the home itself looks like Downton Abbey.

(Giles Keyte/Netflix)

But even rich pensioners get bored in paradise, and so Elizabeth (Mirren), Ron (Brosnan) and Ibrahim (Kingsley) spend their time in the parlour solving cold cases. In the episode’s first ten minutes, Joyce (Celia Imrie, eyes twinkling overtime) comes to join them. Conveniently, she’s an ex-trauma nurse, seemingly blessed with the ability to diagnose people instantly.

Which is just as well, as soon enough they have an actual crime to solve: one of Cooper’s Chase’s owners, Tony, is brutally offed in his own house. With the remaining owner, Ian Ventham (David Tennant, who is cultivating a nice line in snarling sociopaths) keen to flog the retirement home off and sell it for flats, the team gather in an attempt to find out whodunnit and set things to rights.

What unfolds over the next two hours is a best-of-British romp. All the hallmarks of a cosy crime film are there: inept police officers (Daniel Mays, excellent as ever), a last-minute twist, lots of cake and an extended scene towards the end where the entire crime is explained. Thrice over, actually, as there end up being three crimes.

Mirren’s steely Elizabeth, in particular, is a joy to watch, as she repeatedly hoodwinks or manipulates people into complying with her wishes. In-jokes abound: “what are you wearing?” her husband, Stephen (Jonathan Pryce) deadpans at one point, where Elizabeth emerges in disguise, wearing an old tartan skirt and headscarf. “You look like the Queen!”

(Giles Keyte/Netflix)

That same kind of humour is liberally sprinkled throughout the film, along with Thomas Newman’s sentimental score – even if the dialogue veers towards the clunky at times. “Give your statins a fighting chance!” Ibrahim yelps at one point as Ron digs into yet more cake; the next minute, Ron is darkening his teeth with shoe polish and pretending to be a hopeless drunkard to get answers out of the police.

Some of the more complex and sad moments from Osman’s books – the terrible inevitability of ageing, for instance – have been dumbed down and simplified. And while the last few minutes (alright, the last twenty minutes) dips towards the overly saccharine, the film has built up enough goodwill that it’s bearable. This is a celebration of life, and isn’t it fun watching pensioners run rings around the rest of us.

“Teamwork,” Mirren says at one point, when asked about the secret to the club’s success. “People of our generation still remember how valuable that can be.” Maybe there’s something in that.

In cinemas now; on Netflix from August 28