It’s a hit book, but can Thursday Murder Club crack cosy crime for Netflix?
By Karl Quinn
The Thursday Murder Club ★★★
Whodunit? The algorithm, in the Netflix boardroom, with tea and bikkies all around. This light, frothy, mildly entertaining murder mystery is the very definition of content born not from passion or conviction but to satisfy the perceived hunger of an audience for exactly that.
To wit, old people love a bit of crime, right? Sure, they’re terrified of it in real life – “the streets are teeming with gangs, rapists, murderers; something MUST BE DONE!” – but they can’t get enough of the stuff on telly. Of course, they would rather it all be wrapped up by the final credits, with not too much blood and gore, and a nice bit of reassurance that, actually, everything is going to be just fine in the end, thank you very much.
From left: Helen Mirren, Naomi Ackie, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley.Credit: Giles Keyte/Netflix
Exhibit A: The Thursday Murder Club. Well, it’s not so much Exhibit A as it is Exhibit N – Netflix’s attempt to muscle in on a bit of that Midsomer Murders/Murder, She Wrote/Death in Paradise cosy-crime action. And, on its very limited terms, it works. Just about.
Produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and directed by Home Alone veteran Chris Columbus, this movie is positively brimming with stars of a certain age: Helen Mirren (80), Pierce Brosnan (72), Ben Kingsley (81), Celia Imrie (73), Jonathan Pryce (78), Richard E. Grant (68). There’s a couple of Oscar wins and a bunch more nominations in there, but no one will be troubling the awards scorekeepers with this effort; in terms of acting chops, this is strictly a leisurely stroll around the grounds before retiring to the wicker chair with a crochet rug over the knees sort of thing.
Based on the first novel in the best-selling series from English TV presenter and producer Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club has all the marks of a franchise very deliberately in the making.
Set in and around Cooper’s Chase, a luxurious retirement village inside a stately mansion in Kent, the tale centres on a group of residents who meet each Thursday to try to solve cold cases.
But while looking at one such death from the 1970s, former spy Elizabeth (Mirren), trade unionist Ron (Brosnan) and psychotherapist Ibrahim (Kingsley) are dragged into another case that is very much alive: the murder of one of the owners of their home. Needing someone with medical knowledge, they drag in retired nurse-turned-nun-turned-nurse-again Joyce (Imrie) as a probational fourth.
Suspicion immediately falls on the victim’s co-owner (David Tennant), but the role of prime suspect is a hot potato that’s rapidly passed from one likely customer to the next, as is the way in such concoctions.
Meanwhile, a bored local police officer, Donna de Freitas (Naomi Ackie), both helps and is helped by the geriatric detectives, to the frustration of her superior officer (Daniel Mays). But there’s never any doubt about who’s actually going to solve the crime(s).
There is amusement to be had along the way, not least from the way Mirren in particular appears to reference some of her key roles, once doing a rather excellent impersonation of herself as the monarch she played (and won an Oscar for) in The Queen, and repeatedly edging into Jane Tennison (Prime Suspect) territory. But it doesn’t offer the out-and-out hysterical pleasures of, say Only Murders in the Building, instead opting for a rather restrained, polite and oddly bloodless take on crime.
Cosy and comforting? Absolutely. Cutting edge? Not a bit. Just as the data ordered.
The Thursday Murder Club is streaming on Netflix from August 28.
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