The Thursday Murder Club: Yay or nay?

WEB DESK: Chris Columbus has long been associated with comfort viewing, from Home Alone to Mrs. Doubtfire and the first two Harry Potter films, his style leans heavily on warmth and familiarity. With The Thursday Murder Club, Netflix’s glossy adaptation of Richard Osman’s bestselling novel, he brings that same sensibility to a story about pensioners chasing down killers in a luxury retirement village. Produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin, the film boasts a cast stacked with British and Hollywood royalty: Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, David Tennant, and more.

At the heart of it are four residents of Coopers Chase, a retirement home that looks more like a country estate than a care facility. Elizabeth (Mirren), a steely ex-MI6 boss, leads the club, alongside Ron (Brosnan), Ibrahim (Kingsley), and the newly recruited Joyce (Imrie). What begins as a quirky hobby, poring over cold cases instead of doing jigsaws, becomes far more urgent when the home’s shady owner Ian Ventham (Tennant) and his rivals are caught in a deadly power struggle. Before long, there are not one but two murders to unravel.

Columbus delivers the expected chocolate-box vision of England, rolling lawns, endless slices of sponge cake, and a syrupy score when emotions rise. It’s charming enough, but the humour feels thin and the dialogue often leans into clunky exposition. Only Jonathan Pryce, as Elizabeth’s husband Stephen living with dementia, finds something delicate and moving amid the twee. For a film anchored by such accomplished actors, the laughs should land harder.

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Still, fans of Osman’s books will be most interested in how the adaptation reshapes the story. Several key changes stand out. Ron’s son Jason (Tom Ellis) is far more implicated here: arrested on suspicion of murder, only to clear himself with an incriminatingly timestamped photo. In the novel, Jason avoids such drama and is given more room as a sympathetic figure. A whole subplot involving shady photographer “Turkish Johnny” is dropped entirely. Bobby Tanner (Richard E. Grant) shifts from passive to menacing, even sending goons to frighten Elizabeth in a graveyard.

New touches also appear. The club members now wear gold TCM medallion necklaces, symbolic trinkets absent from the books but a neat visual flourish onscreen. By contrast, Father Mackie’s subplot, a red herring in Osman’s novel, is reduced to a cameo in a protest scene. Bogdan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), the handyman, retains his crucial role, but his motives are softened: his killing of Tony Curran is presented as an accident rather than cold-blooded revenge.

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Whether these changes streamline the plot or sand off its edges will depend on your perspective. The twists remain busy enough, but at times the emotional weight feels buried beneath sentimentality. And while the residents fret about developers bulldozing Coopers Chase, the place is already so lavish that it’s hard to see them as underdogs in peril.

For casual viewers, The Thursday Murder Club may work as a comforting Sunday-night mystery with A-list pedigree. It’s handsomely shot, occasionally witty, and delivers enough intrigue to keep things ticking along. For readers of Osman’s series, the film’s alterations will be talking points, some smart, some frustrating, all proof of how tricky it is to balance cosy tone with cinematic stakes.

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Ultimately, the film captures the charm of its characters but never quite musters the sharpness or humour that made the books a phenomenon. Sweet and polished, yes, but more like a lukewarm cuppa than a piping hot page-turner.