The Thursday Murder Club, directed by Chris Columbus, is streaming on Netflix now.
In America, they spell cosy with a “z”. So, while this Netflix film adaptation of Richard Osman’s first novel in his bestselling Thursday Murder Club series has very British origins and cast, it should perhaps be filed under cozy crime drama. That’s because it’s directed by American Chris Columbus, the director of many broad Hollywood comedies (like the Home Alone movies) before, he directed the first two Harry Potter films. He made a very average job of them but enough to get the screen franchise rolling and get those Florida theme parks built.
Just as Hogwarts had a senior staff of great British thespians, so too has TTMC. The old people’s sleuthing squad includes Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie, as well as Irish former 007 Pierce Brosnan trying on another couple of accents as former trade unionist Ron Ritchie. Also in the mix are Richard E Grant in a role best left unspoiled and Sir Jonathan Pryce as a retired academic and the husband of Mirren’s character Elizabeth (a former spy). After Pryce’s turn as River Cartwright’s grandad in Slow Horses, he seems to have cornered the market on senile geniuses with family connections to MI5.
Osman’s book was self-aware about its genre trappings and the movie attempts to recognise some of it. Imrie’s former nurse Joyce blurts, “I feel like we’re in one of those Sunday-night dramas about two bright-eyed, feisty old lady detectives outsmarting the police at every turn. Do you feel like that?” A stern Elizabeth replies, “No. And never use the words ‘bright-eyed, feisty old ladies’ in my presence again.”
All of which of which would be funnier if the scene had some pace and spark, but it seems Columbus is here to hold the viewer’s’ hand and translate the peculiarly British institution of the country house whodunnit to American audiences. Just as it was with his Potters, the acting isn’t up to much, with some very pantomime turns from Brosnan, as well as David Tennant, playing a cartoonishly evil property developer who wants to turn the idyllic Coopers Chase retirement home into something else, possibly another in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel chain.
Basically, the whodunnit involves the four using their age to good advantage as they meddle in a police investigation facilitated by a kindly and bright young constable Donna played by Naomi Ackie. It’s a stodgy two hours that makes you wonder if it might have fared better as a TV series, a kind of Only Murders in the Country Pile.
It does, however, have occasional fun with the cinematic history of its actors, including a heavy nod to Mirren’s The Queen. While this is the kind of cozy caper you’ll forget by Friday, if enough people like it, adaptations of the rest in the series will surely offer room for improvement.
Rating out of five: ★★★
