Author Richard Osman (seated) on set with the cast of The Thursday Murder Club film adaptation. From left: Sir Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, Dame Helen Mirren and Celia Imrie.
Television funnyman turned Thursday Murder Club novelist Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders releases here on September 24. He talks to Kim Knight about a new book, new characters and, well, New Zealand.
There is a theory that New Zealanders subconsciously seek out the letter “Z”.
When it appears on the printed page our eyes, apparently, leap to the familiar. Are we there yet? Can the world see us now?
In the fourth book of the wildly popular Thursday Murder Club series, we are definitely there.
Page 342: “There was a rugby union player, Jonah Lomu, a New Zealand Tongan, who rewrote the rules of the game, because of his size and speed. No one had seen anything like him before. This hulk, this oversized tank, who moved with such grace and pace.”
A man (no spoilers) is about to hurl another man (still no spoilers) over a parapet. And, as he does so, a witness is moved to compare him to one of the greatest All Blacks of all time.
How did a Jonah Lomu cameo end up in a book about four senior citizens who solve murders?
“So I love sport,” explains author Richard Osman. “And occasionally someone comes along who is bigger than their sport, and who it is impossible to ignore. And I love people who represent two things at the same time. Lomu was big AND fast. I love these people who exceed our expectations.
“If you said ‘Jonah Lomu’ to every single British person over 35, they would absolutely nod and say ‘oh my God – wasn’t he incredible?’ . . . I try to people my books with references that aren’t unique or exclusive. The sort of things ordinary people would talk about.”
Osman reportedly wrote the first Thursday Murder Club book in secret. The novel – centred on a group of crime-solving pensioners who live in the Coopers Chase retirement village – was published in September 2020 and sold 45,000 copies in its first three days.
Now there are four books in the series, more than 10 million sales worldwide and Osman’s main characters – Elizabeth, Ron, Joyce and Ibrahim – will be respectively played by Dame Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie and Sir Ben Kingsley in a movie adaptation directed by Chris Columbus for Stephen Spielberg’s production company (Netflix has the distribution rights).
The Thursday Murder Club is on a roll – but its creator is pausing while he’s ahead.
Osman’s on the phone from his home in West London touting We Solve Murders (Viking, $38). A brand new series, starring the father-and-daughter-in-law detecting team, Amy and Steve Wheeler.
“I learnt from television, a long time ago, you have to change things up before readers or viewers want you to. Because if they get bored before you do, that’s it. You’re absolutely doomed.”
Plus, he says, “I did feel the first Thursday Murder Club books form a bit of a quartet. And by the end of the fourth, they did need a year off.”
If you are a fan of the series, you will know why. The thing about humans is they get old and the older they get the more human they become. Osman’s last book was funny, fast-paced - and completely and utterly devastating.
“I get a lot of joy from writing these four characters,” he says. “We have a lot of fun because they don’t really care about the consequences. They’re unlikely friends and the things that they do and the doors that they can open . . . but there is a tax you have to pay on that.
“We have to believe these characters, We have to see the other side of it, the stuff that buys us the fun. And I can’t pretend that dementia goes away or that certain people won’t make certain decisions in that situation. I’m not writing a fantasy book. I’m not writing a book about superheroes. For every laugh those four have ever given me, I have to pay the levy. Which is to make them real.”
His grandfather had dementia. Osman says he wanted to pay tribute to him; to try and understand “a little bit more” what he might have gone through.
“And I’m very happy that people have been moved by it.”
Osman was already famous when he became a famous author.
His very British television career started behind the scenes on the likes of 8 Out of 10 Cats, 10 O’Clock Live and Whose Line Is It Anyway. He was a writer, producer, executive producer, and, ultimately, panellist. In 2009, he began co-hosting Pointless, the quiz gameshow he devised and successfully pitched to the BBC. His comedic stylings have featured on everything from Taskmaster to QI to Let’s Play Darts and, in the United Kingdom, his social media “World Cup” polls (crisps, biscuits, etc) have become nation-defining moments. Ask him for a World Cup of New Zealand list and, well . . .
“There is a show I watch endlessly. Highway Patrol New Zealand. It’s just rural cops pulling over boy racers. The scenery is so beautiful and the accent is so stunning.”
A post-interview Google reveals he probably means Motorway Patrol but bonus points for not leading with Lord of the Rings which he ranks after actor and comedian Rose Matafeo, the All Blacks and the Black Caps.
“I’d rather watch Jonah Lomu than Lord of the Rings. But I understand why people like it.”
Osman’s superpower is, perhaps, his ability to connect with the everyday and everybody. He’s picked up the phone to talk to a complete stranger about his new book, but will also happily answer questions about his new kitten (“I think maybe we’re going to introduce her to the other cat today”) and his relatively new wife – British actor and comedian Ingrid Oliver aka Doctor Who’s Petronella Osgood.
“It’s a concrete example of being in love,” he says of the decision to remarry, aged 50. “We’d accumulated so many friends from so many different walks of life – primary school, university, work – and they’ve all seen us go through all sorts of crap over the years. And for the two of us to finally come together and for everyone to go ‘Ohh’ . . . the whole day just sort of spoke of love. That was a lovely thing to be able to do and we’ve just been surfing the wave ever since, to be honest.”
(There are, he prefaces, plenty of people not getting married and that is also absolutely fine).
Osman grew up in Cuckfield, West Sussex. His father left when he was nine; his mother became a teacher to support her family. His brother is Mat Osman, bassist for Suede (routinely referenced in the same sentences as Blur, Pulp and Oasis) and, also, an author.
“My mum comes from a working-class background. All she ever really wanted was for me and my brother to be a doctor and a lawyer,” says Osman.
“She wanted us to have a job we couldn’t be fired from, that we could have forever. We grew up in very shaky financial circumstances. My mum’s fear has always been what happens if you lose it all? You can go back to nothing very, very quickly. My brother being in a band terrified her. He sold millions of records and toured around the world. It still terrified her.
“Me, being in TV, I think she found slightly easier. But then she’d say ‘hHow long is your contract?’ And I’d say ‘I don’t really have a contract . . .’”
Turns out, Osman suspects, that what his Mum hadn’t realised was that she wanted her sons to become authors.
“I thought she was proud of us before, but now . . . it’s so lovely to see the pride on her face. If my Mum is one thing, she’s a reader. There were always books around. My brother is an incredibly voracious, literate reader. He reads every difficult book that ever comes out. I, of course, read Agatha Christie and potboilers.”
A Venn diagram of books all three would love is “quite small . . . Kate Atkinson. Le Carre”.
Mat Osman’s latest book The Ghost Theatre is set in Shakespearean London and features a child theatre troupe and a community of bird worshippers. Richard Osman’s latest book We Solve Murders is, according to various early reviews, more of a thriller than his previous bestsellers but “lightly done and just as funny” and a “delightful read”.
Was he nervous about introducing new characters to old fans?
“Here’s the secret people don’t know about The Thursday Murder Club,” says Osman. “I made them up. So, you know, if you like them, they came from inside my head. And this new book comes from inside my head too.”
His biggest writing rule is character before plot – always.
“It’s not what happens in the book but why do I care what happens in the book? We have to want to be on a journey with this group of people. The journey itself can come later.”
Osman claims he is “really desperately trying to write a serious book”. He is (in this reader’s humble opinion) failing, so here’s his second rule: “The characters can make the reader laugh, but the author can’t.”
Things you will definitely not find in an Osman book include half-page treatises on what the sky looks like.
“I assume you already know,” says the author. “And if I look up, I’m not seeing it as well as you, so there’s no point listening to me.”
Osman was born with nystagmus. Described by ophthalmologists as “involuntary, rapid and repetitive movement of the eyes”, it significantly impacts his vision. He learns scripts by heart and says it “definitely” affects his writing.
“If I ever get notes from the editor, they’re always ‘what does this person look like? What does this place look like?’ I don’t know. I literally couldn’t care less. You know when you’re reading books about someone old and they have a twitch in their left eye? I’m like ‘What? I’ve never seen that! What are you talking about?’ Or they’ll describe a ‘sea of hollyhocks’. I don’t see any of that. I’m straight to the action and the feelings and the thoughts.”
Occasionally, a publisher gets their way. Ron Ritchie, for example, the Thursday Murder Club’s rough-and-ready former union activist is written as “bull-nosed truck rusting in a field” but it’s a descriptor that will, arguably, soon be irrelevant. Once the movie is out, everybody will know: Ron looks like Pierce Brosnan.
Osman has not been involved in the film adaptation – “you can’t interfere, you either do the whole thing yourself or you don’t” – but he’s made a set visit and is “over the moon” about the casting.
“Pierce Brosnan . . . You see him and you think “Bond” but he’s such a great comic actor. I was talking to him on set the other day and I said, ‘Pierce, here’s the thing – you are who Ron would have chosen to play Ron’. And that just makes me so happy.
“In the next book, I’m going to have Ron and Ibrahim talk about who they think the best Bond is. You can guess who Ron is going to say.”
Strong female characters: “I think women are probably more interesting to write about, in terms of how they have to navigate the world . . . I come from a family of very strong, funny women. I have a very big well to go to if I want to write a woman who people are going to fall in love with.”
Starting sentences with “and”: “At primary school, we only got taught about four things and one of them was ‘you musn’t start a sentence with the word ‘and’. But the other rule you learn very quickly in life is if you know the rules, you can break them . . . I get a secret thrill every single time I do that.”
Character development: “Writers who say, ‘Yeah, I’ve written an entire dossier about this character, I know what they have for breakfast and what they did in 1985′. I’m like – you could have been writing the book while you were doing that! I love finding out about the characters as the readers find out about the characters.”
Finishing a novel: “I’ve done every type of writing. I started in journalism, I’ve done sitcom, animation, gag writing . . . I’ve written forever, but I think the universe was looking after me when it said ‘Wait until you’re a little bit older before you actually do the marathon of writing – which is to write a novel’. Of all the creative things you’re ever going to do, it is the hardest.”
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Viking, $38) published in New Zealand on September 24, 2024.
Kim Knight is an award-winning journalist with the New Zealand Herald’s premium lifestyle team.
The film explores themes of survival and humanity during societal collapse.