This movie adaptation of the best-selling novel is more of an affectionate tribute to the murder-mystery genre than it is a subversion or reinvention of it, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and the cast list alone makes the film worth a watch.

Premise: Four residents at a retirement home – Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), Ron (Pierce Brosnan), Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley) and Joyce (Celia Imrie) – run an amateur detective club re-examining cold cases for fun … but when someone they know is murdered, they decide to help the police solve the crime (whether or not the police want them to).

Review:

I’ll confess that I’ve not read Richard Osman’s 2020 best-selling novel, so I’m judging this film adaptation purely on its own merits – and the truth is, I found The Thursday Murder Club to be a fun and entertaining murder mystery movie. Admittedly, it’s not trying to reinvent the wheel or subvert the genre in the way that films like Knives Out and Glass Onion did, nor is it going for an overtly comedic tone like Confess, Fletch, A Simple Favour or Enola Holmes, nor is it played deadly seriously like Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot adaptations – instead, it’s just a light-hearted, slightly tongue-in-cheek “traditional” murder mystery, that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but isn’t quite a comedy either.

Whatever tone a murder mystery movie is aiming for, the reality is that it lives or dies on how engaging the central mystery is – too convoluted and you lose viewers’ attention, but too straightforward and there’s no suspense. In this regard, I have to say that I didn’t see the majority of the twists and turns coming in The Thursday Murder Club, and it kept me guessing until the big reveals – which is perhaps all you can ask for from a good murder mystery.

“…an engaging murder mystery…”

The central mystery is brought to life by a cast list that most casting directors would die for. Headlining as the core team of amateur sleuths are Dame Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan OBE, Sir Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie CBE, who are effectively acting royalty – and supporting them we also have veterans like Jonathan Pryce, Paul Freeman and Richard E. Grant. The younger generation are represented by the likes of David Tennant (who, if we’re feeling ungenerous, could be said to be playing the unscrupulous owner of the retirement home a little too OTT), Daniel Mays (playing an exasperated cop who’s in over his depth), Tom Ellis (playing Ron’s son), and Naomi Ackie (as an overlooked PC) who’s on a hell of a run at the moment after her recent performances in Blink Twice and Mickey 17.

Ultimately, the movie does what it sets out to do, which is provide an engaging murder mystery set in an idealised world where retirees investigate slightly larger-than-life suspects much to the frustration of comically ineffective police detectives. It’s not trying to be gritty like Prime Suspect, or played for laughs like The Naked Gun – it’s a ‘comfort food’ movie that’s just trying to be a bit of fun, and present a world where it’s perfectly acceptable to bribe a police detective with an obscenely large slice of cake…