The murder mystery: Once a dowdy, dated genre, now back in fashion, evidenced by the popularity of The Thursday Murder Club, a bestselling book series launched in 2020 by author and TV celeb Richard Osman, the adaptation for which seems like a slamdunk for Netflix. Hence, the big names involved, ranging from old-pro director Chris Columbus (the first two Harry Potters, Mrs. Doubtfire, Home Alone, etc.) behind the camera to Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley in front of it. This is a specific subgenre of mystery dubbed (I feel dorky even typing this) “cozy crime,” where amateur sleuths investigate crimes and audiences aren’t privy to any of the edgier elements inherent to such stories, especially bloodshed and grisly depictions of death – and we can make a strong argument that TTMC just might be the coziest murder mystery ever.
The Gist: Cooper’s Chase is ground zero for coziness. Def con 1 for cushy floral-patterned pillows, lush greenery, lolling peagraveled garden paths, emotional-support llamas and soup. Oh my god, the place almost certainly has the greatest soup you could ever imagine – rich and creamy or robustly brothy. (Don’t get me started on the stews I can dream up from the ether, either.) All you have to do is look past the hospice wing, but that’s a necessity in the U.K.’s most posh, sprawling megacastle of a retirement home. This is where the Thursday Murder Club assembles every week: Former MI6 spy Elizabeth (Mirren, who, you’ll note, has played other Elizabeths prior to this), psychologist Ibrahim (Kingsley) and union chief Ron (Brosnan) hang out in the Cooper’s Chase “puzzle room” – which could fit some sizable aircraft in it if it wasn’t for all the exquisitely carved furniture and built-ins stockpiled with jigsaw puzzles and board games – pouring over an old cold case. Their fourth member was a cop with access to these unsolved mysteries, which they tackle for fun, and almost certainly to exercise their mind muscles. But she’s in the hospice wing now, comatose. So it goes, sure, but it also means the TMC could use a fourth.
Enter Joyce (Celia Imrie, who was the secret comedy weapon of TV series Better Things). She’s new to Cooper’s Chase, and one assumes her daughter can afford the surely astronomical fees to live there, since she’s a hedge-fund banking whatever whatever. Having settled into her enormous, stunningly well-lit apartment with a sparkling modern kitchen setup perfect for her hobby of baking sumptuous motherf—ing cakes, Joyce wanders into the puzzle room – presumably after walking by the mahogany-laden library, the chefs’ quarters, the cavernous dining hall, the IMAX cinema tuned to Turner Classic Movies with the sound turned down, the orthopedic cobbler’s workshop, the haberdashery, the from-scratch fudge bakery, the quadruple-Olympic-sized pool, 17 shuffleboard cour- where was I? I got lost for a sec there. Right: Joyce strolls past the llama’s chefs’ quarters to the puzzle room and isn’t remotely fazed by the gruesome crime-scene photos on Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron’s bulletin board. She used to be an ER nurse, see. And so her iron stomach and knowledge of awful bodily harms would be perfect for the TMC. She’s in, baby.
And just in the nick – see, the two ownership partners of Cooper’s Chase (one played by David Tennant in full-sleaze mode) are at odds. One wants to bulldoze the adjacent graveyard (it probably has motorized lounge chairs for luxuriant graveside visitations) and turn the place into condos or something, the other wants to keep it as is. The latter one ends up doornail-dead, murdered. You will not be shocked to realize this scenario is perfect for a few geriatric buttinskies to investigate, with the help of a surprisingly accommodating, loose-with-the-rules-of-procedure policewoman, Donna (Naomi Ackie). As the plot inevitably thicks like the elegantly creamed and whipped frosting on one of Joyce’s confections, it involves a Polish immigrant (Henry Lloyd Hughes), Ron’s ex-boxer/current TV star son (Tom Ellis), a slob detective (Daniel Mays), a crime boss (Richard E. Grant, committing outright theft of his one scene, unapologetically) and other characters existing on various points of the moral spectrum. Will the TMC pull on the threads and follow the leads through all the twists (and ornate drawing rooms and pristine manicured lawns and all that) and solve this/these crime(s)? NO SPOILERS, but I can say they do it in the most lightweight manner, as befits the setting.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: TTMC is essentially Agatha Christie’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Performance Worth Watching: Brosnan and especially Kingsley are given not much to do, so the emphasis is on the witty, intelligent ladies – and the dynamic between the typically razor-sharp Mirren and Imrie’s relative naivete is enjoyable. And don’t discount the underrated Imrie’s ability to hang with her more famous co-stars.
Memorable Dialogue: Imrie neatly sums up the film’s tone with this line: “Now we have a real case to solve. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: If you can get past TTMC’s rampant real-estate porn – a tall task, for sure – you’ll notice how wry its comedic sensibilities are. First, its juxtaposition of extreme coziness to the finality of death is winking, but also dark in its whimsy; may we all go out in a spacious, open-air room with high ceilings, on a $12,000 featherbed mattress covered with a fine velveteen duvet and surrounded by bay windows allowing in glorious natural light and a postcard countryside view, the movie seems to be saying. Second, it establishes its protagonists as wily sorts who use the perception of doddering geriatrics to their advantage. Columbus may not be a director noted for his subtlety, but this film’s understated self-awareness keeps it from being silly pablum.
Such elements, pulsing quietly in the modest subtext, insert an idea or two into what’s otherwise a slick, accessible, borderline-throwaway comedy. Latching onto Mirren and Imrie is a must, since much of the rest of the cast old-pros their way through some crummy dialogue and the screenplay’s emphasis on plot over character. The story gets dense with a pair of sub-mysteries needlessly buttressing the primary one, and cuts in subplots about end-of-life care, the travails of having a spouse with dementia (Elizabeth’s ailing husband is played with signature poignancy by Jonathan Pryce) and the exploitation of illegal immigrants. All this stuff struggles to hang together for two hours, leading to a final 20 cluttered with about a half-dozen herky-jerky endings – and of course some gentle implications that a sequel sure would be nice, wouldn’t it?
Columbus does reasonably well by the material – screenwriters Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote adapted Osman’s novel, and I assume were influenced by reams of high-end real-estate listings – by maintaining a lighthearted tone. His apparent goal isn’t to twist the screws until we sweat, but to breeze through some murder-investigation procedures with a gentle, non-bruising nudge in the ribs. Of course, he might also be worried that his retirement-age target audience might not appreciate too much tension or suspense, which rubs the wrong way against one of the film’s key assertions: don’t you dare underestimate old people. Although better murder-mysteries vie for our attention nowadays (Rian Johnson’s Knives Out films and Murder She Wrote-inspired Poker Face series are the modern high-water mark), I will say I underestimated The Thursday Murder Club’s ability to draw me in; it made me care about whodunit just enough to endure its bumps. Its smooth, gentle, gingham-covered, luxuriously rose-scented bumps.
Our Call: Untimely death sure can be pleasant sometimes, can’t it? STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.