If you’re looking for a fun movie on Netflix to watch over Labor Day weekend, check out The Thursday Murder Club, a new murder mystery film that began streaming on Netflix today.
Directed by Chris Columbus, with a screenplay written by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote, The Thursday Murder Club stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie as a group of retirement home residents who solve cold case murders for fun. But when a real murder happens at the swanky Cooper’s Chase retirement center, the group decides to put their skills to the test. The Thursday Murder Club supporting cast is equally star-studded, featuring David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, Naomi Ackie, Daniel Mays, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Richard E. Grant, Tom Ellis, Geoff Bell, Paul Freeman, Sarah Niles, and Ingrid Oliver.
There’s a grand total of three murders to solve in The Thursday Murder Club. If you got lost along the way, or just want to skip to the end, then Decider has you covered. Read on for a full breakdown of The Thursday Murder Club movie plot summary and The Thursday Murder Club movie ending explained, including who is the killer in The Thursday Murder Club.
Warning: Major The Thursday Murder Club spoilers ahead. Duh!
Joyce Meadowcroft (Celia Imrie) moves into the swanky new retirement home, Cooper’s Chase. Joyce’s daughter Joana (Ingrid Oliver) is skeptical, but Joyce insists she wants to be around a community. One day, Joyce accidentally walks in on a meeting for “The Thursday Murder Club,” aka a group of residents who solve cold cases for fun. The leader of the group, Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) is impressed that Joyce doesn’t flinch at the grizzly photos she sees, and correctly deduces that Joyce is a retired nurse. Elizabeth wants a medical opinion on their latest cold case, about a 1973 murder of a woman named Angela Hughes, whose boyfriend, Peter Mercer, claimed she was killed by a masked intruder in their apartment. So, Elizabeth invites Joyce to the club.
Joyce meets the gang: Elizabeth, a retired spy; Ron (Pierce Brosnan), a retired union leader; and Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), a retired psychiatrist. Joyce offers her medical opinion on the Angela Hughes case: She believes Angela Hughes could have survived the knife attack that supposedly killed her, if her boyfriend Peter had tried to help her. But then something happens that distracts the club from Angela Hughes—the co-owner of Cooper’s Chase, Tony Curran (Geoff Bell), is murdered in his home.
The obvious suspect is Cooper’s Chase other co-owner, Ian Ventham (David Tennant). Ian Ventham has been vocal about his plan to sell Cooper’s Chase and use it as an event space for a luxury housing development. Tony refused to let Ian sell, and the two of them were seen having a loud argument just days before Tony’s death. Also, Ian hired a Polish immigrant named Bogdan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) to take Tony’s place as co-owner just days before Tony was killed. Suspicious!
Naturally, the Thursday Murder Club is (unofficially) on the case. They befriend a local police office, PC Donna De Freitas (Naomi Ackie), and manage to get her working the case. After a few red herrings, the plot thickens when Ian dies, seemingly of a heart attack, during a protest over his plan to sell Cooper’s Chase. However, it turns out he was killed via a fentanyl overdose moments before his death, meaning Ian was also murdered, likely by one of the residents who attended the protest.
Thanks to her background as a spy, Elizabeth speaks some Polish and uses this to befriend Bogdan, the Polish immigrant who worked for Ian and Tony. Bogdan tells Elizabeth, no, Ian did not hire him to kill Tony. Later, Bogdan pays a visit to Elizabeth’s home, and befriends her husband Stephen (Jonathan Pryce), who suffers from dementia. Bogdan tells Elizabeth he has something to show her, and tells her to meet him at the cemetery that night. That night, Bogdan shows Elizabeth a grave he found while digging to break ground on the new housing development. It’s a grave with a human skeleton thrown on top of a closed coffin, suggesting someone hid an extra dead body in the grave. Bogdan also reveals he can’t visit his sick mother in Poland because when he was hired to work for Ian, they took his passport for “safekeeping.”
It turns out the skeleton in the cemetery are the remains of Peter Mercer—aka the boyfriend of Angela Hughes, the woman killed in the 1973 cold case from the beginning of the movie. Elizabeth brings this news to her friend Penny, a former police office who is in a coma and spends her days hooked up to a machine, with her faithful husband John (Paul Freeman) always sitting by her side. John reacts a tad suspiciously to the news of Peter’s remains being found, but it’s probably nothing, right?
Elizabeth and PC Donna go to question Bobby Tanner (Richard E. Grant), a dangerous mobster previously thought dead, who was secretly a third owner of Cooper’s Chase, alongside Ian Ventham and Tony Curran. Elizabeth received an anonymous warning to “back off,” with a bouquet of flowers. She finds the florist that delivered the bouquet, and sure enough, that’s where Bobby Tanner is. Bobby didn’t have Ian and Tony murdered, and doesn’t want anything to do with Cooper’s Chase. Elizabeth correctly deduces that Bobby and his business are bringing in immigrants like Bogdan to the country and taking their passports. So, she offers a deal to Bobby: Sell Cooper’s Chase at market value to a buyer of her choosing, and she won’t rat him about bringing in workers illegally.
Meanwhile, Bogdan is playing chess with his new friend Stephen, aka Elizabeth’s senile husband. In a rare moment of clarity, Stephen confronts Bogdan about killing Tony Curran, and Bogdan confesses. He says it was an accident, and that he was just trying to get his passport from Tony so he could visit his sick mom.
Bobby tells Elizabeth that Tony was particularly stingy about giving workers passports, and Elizabether realizes Bogdan must be the murderer. She calls the police and races back to Stephen. The police confront Bogdan. Even though Stephen no longer remembers Bogdan’s confession, he has it recorded. Stephen records much of his day to help him remember things. So the police have Bogdan confessing that he killed Tony on tape. But we still don’t know who murdered Ian!
Elizabeth continues working on the cold case of Angela Hughes, and has a breakthrough. She confronts her comatose friend Penny and her husband John, and lays it all out: Angela’s boyfriend Peter Mercer was Angela’s killer, and that he lied to the police about the masked intruder. The police believed Peter’s story—all except for Penny, the former police officer. She knew Peter was guilty. So Penny took matters into her own hands, and killed Peter Mercer herself. Then she and John hid Peter’s body in the cemetery, where Bogdan would discover it many years later.
How does this connect to Ian Ventham? Well, John killed Ian Ventham, because John didn’t want Ventham to dig up Peter’s body. So John used one of the syringes of fentanyl he has for Penny’s pain to kills Ian. He did it to protect Penny’s reputation. John confesses that yes, he did kill Ian. He feels helpless to help Penny, and this was one thing he could do. John asks Elizabeth for a minute alone with Penny to say goodbye before she goes to the police. Elizabeth agrees, but seems to know that John will use this time to use a fentanyl syringe to take his own life, as well as Penny’s life, to save both their reputations.
Indeed, this is what happens. One of the last scenes of the movie is a joint funeral for Penny and John. Joyce officially joins the Thursday Murder Club, and Joyce’s daughter Joana agrees to buy Cooper’s Chase and keep it open as a retirement home. All’s well that ends well!