Agatha Christie introduced her famed detective Miss Jane Marple in her 1927 short story “The Tuesday Night Club.” The elderly amateur sleuth, her nephew, and a colorful group that includes a former police commissioner, a clergyman, an artist, and a lawyer, decide to meet once a week to discuss real-life mysteries; each week, one member will present a case, and the rest will endeavor to come up with the solution. The tale became the first chapter of Christie’s 1932 novel, The Thirteen Problems.
The title of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club is a clear homage to Dame Agatha, and it treads similar ground with its tale of four elderly English retirees who meet weekly to delve into cold cases—until a present-day murder hits very close to home. A new film version of Osman’s Kirkus-starred 2020 mystery, directed by Chris Columbus and starring Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, and Celia Imrie, premieres on Netflix on August 28.
The four septuagenarian main characters of Osman’s series starter all live in the Coopers Chase Retirement Village in the county of Kent in South East England. The newest arrival is Joyce Meadowcroft, a former nurse whose excited diary entries complement and expand on the third-person narration. Brilliant ex-spy Elizabeth Best founded the Thursday Murder Club with her friend, former cop Penny Gray, who would supply the group with files of unsolved cases to pore over and attempt to solve. (As the novel begins, Penny is no longer an active member, as she’s in a coma in the village’s nursing home.) Other members include fastidious ex-psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and brash former union organizer Ron Ritchie.
When Police Constable Donna DeFreitas visits the village for a safety talk, the group befriends her. This connection will come in handy when Tony Curran, the construction manager at Coopers Chase, is murdered. His boss, Coopers Chase owner Ian Ventham, had recently fired Tony and replaced him with construction worker Bogdan Jankowski; Ventham also has plans to bulldoze a church cemetery on the village’s land and build a brand-new project that’s very unpopular among the village’s residents. As Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim, Ron, Donna, and their allies delve into the case, many secrets about Tony, Ian, and their associates are revealed—and, before long, a few more deaths need investigating.
Osman’s novel delivers a perfectly fine whodunit, but the twists and turns of the investigation are less interesting than the members of the Thursday Murder Club itself, whose interplay is consistently entertaining: Joyce, who’s simply delighted to be part of a group that values her skills; Elizabeth, whose cool demeanor feels like a lighthearted riff on a John Le Carré character; Ibrahim, whose keen attention to detail finds a perfect outlet in the club; and Ron, whose commitment to fighting injustice remains as strong as when he was a younger man.
The novel is also very funny, which only makes the group more likable. It’s rare that a page goes by without an amusing and often cutting line, as when Joyce writes in her diary, “You mustn’t speak ill of the dead, I know, but there are exceptions to every rule,” and just a few pages later, Elizabeth tells the group, “So, we were all witnesses to a murder. Which, needless to say, is wonderful.”
The filmmakers understand that the club’s fab four are key to the story’s appeal, and to that end, writers Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote streamline the sometimes-rambling source material; a few unnecessary minor characters are gone, as are a few red-herring subplots and scenes, including an odd trip to Cyprus taken by PC De Freitas’ colleague. It makes for a tight, economical, and satisfying mystery, in which no scene is wasted and every thread is tied up.
Imrie, who’s perhaps best known to American audiences for her appearances in the Bridget Jones films, is excellent as the affable Joyce, but the film belongs to Mirren and Brosnan; they aren’t generally known for comedic roles, but they’re obviously having fun here as an ex-intelligence operative and a lifelong rebel, respectively. (The pair also recently delivered appealingly over-the-top performances in the first season of the Paramount+ series MobLand as amoral, married professional criminals; we’re clearly in a Mirren/Brosnan golden age.) Kingsley is also quite good in a surprisingly low-key role, and all four actors play off one another with the skills of a practiced troupe. Secondary players, too, get time to shine—particularly Doctor Who’s David Tennant as the loathsome Ian Ventham and the great Richard E. Grant in a key role toward the end. Jonathan Pryce delivers a touching performance in just a few scenes as Elizabeth’s ailing husband, Stephen.
Three more books follow the club’s further adventures—The Man Who Died Twice (2021), The Bullet That Missed (2022), and The Last Devil To Die (2023)—so movie sequels are a possibility, and they’d certainly be welcome. Nearly a century since that first Miss Marple adventure, there’s still a place for stylish, team-oriented cozy mysteries—and viewers will look forward to seeing this team return in future films.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
