Should I Watch.? 'The Thursday Murder Club' (2025)

The Thursday Murder Club is a comic mystery film released in 2025 and is based on the novel of the same name by Richard Osman. The film stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Celie Imrie and Ben Kingsley as a quartet of pensioners at a retirement home who investigate cold cases and who suddenly find themselves dealing with a murder that considerably warmer. Directed by Chris Columbus, the film was released amid massive anticipation due to the huge popularity of the book with Osman himself acting as an executive producer. The film received a limited theatrical release before being broadcast on a digital streaming service, due to that service being heavily involved in the film's production. Response to the film has proved broadly positive although it has not yet been confirmed whether the film series will continue adapting the second book in the series, The Man Who Died Twice.

At the Cooper's Chase retirement complex in Kent, a trio of residents - former trade union leader Ron, psychiatrist Ibrahim and enigmatic Elizabeth - are the sole members of a club dedicated to trying to solve cold cases known as the Thursday Murder Club. Currently wrestling with the unsolved murder of Angela Hughes, they quickly befriend former nurse Joyce who has only recently arrived at Cooper's Chase. Hoping to use her medical knowledge on the case, Joyce finds herself intrigued and soon decides to join them although her daughter Joanna is less than pleased with her mother's macabre new past-time.

After a visit from PC Donna De Freitas falls flat, the quartet begin discussing their case with the inexperienced police officer. However, things quickly take a very dark turn when one of the co-owners of Cooper's Chase - investor Tony Curran - is found murdered in his home. The TMC decide that they should investigate alongside the local police, led by incompetent DCI Chris Hudson, and with Donna's help, they soon find themselves elbow-deep in conspiracy, conjecture and criminal dealings...

Let me say, for the purposes of clarity, that I am probably the last person in the UK to get around to reading the book. Nevertheless, I know enough to know that the book is a rather genteel affair that harks back to the cosy stylings and formula of Agatha Christie. So it doesn't really surprise me to find that this is precisely what this film is, a gentle and easy-going murder mystery with some witty dialogue and an absolutely stellar cast. It feels like an all-star episode of Murder, She Wrote with some of British cinema's biggest performers dwelling in a film that actually feels a little beneath them. With multiple Oscar wins and nominations and a former James Bond among the cast, it's almost shocking to find them in a somewhat sedate movie like this.

The four main leads do a decent job of holding our attention, even if Mirren does get the majority of the screen time. Brosnan is the most entertaining, depicting a working class hero who is a world away from his tenure as 007. There is also great support from the likes of Ackie, Paul Freeman as a fellow resident and Mays who still manages to bring something different to a rather stereotypical role, one that he seems to find himself frequently typecast as. The comedy is, like the narrative, unobtrusive but effective and you can tell the cast are having fun on set. There's a rare warmth to the film that is welcome in these increasingly dark times, a sense of familiarity that wraps itself around you like an old, favoured blanket. The Thursday Murder Club is the sort of movie that a family could easily watch together, in spite of the rather harsh rating (in my opinion). There's little to offend here - but in a weird way, that's also its biggest failing.

• Christie's iconic Miss Marple character came to define the geriatric investigator role that The Thursday Murder Club pays homage to. The character first appeared in a short story in 1927 called The Tuesday Night Club.
• The film adaptation was announced before the book had even been published. Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment purchased the rights in March 2020 while the book wasn't released until the September. Osman decided to not intervene too much with the filming because, as he put it, if Spielberg knew how to produce ET, The Extra Terrestrial then he could probably make a film without Osman's input.
• Joanna, Joyce's daughter, is played by Ingrid Oliver who has been married to Osman since 2022. They first met on the set of his TV show Richard Osman's House Of Games when she appeared as a contestant.

Murder mysteries are enjoying something of a renaissance in recent years after the surprise success of the likes of Knives Out which also feels like a Christie tribute, as does Kenneth Branagh's big-screen revival of her other popular character, Hercule Poirot. Comic murder mysteries are a tricky thing to pull off and I'm afraid that The Thursday Murder Club is a bit too sedate for my tastes. It's not bust-a-gut funny unlike Knives Out and feels far too similar to much of the competition. It doesn't do anything wrong, in the traditional sense. It certainly isn't a bad film but it just plays it way too safely. It rarely gets out of second gear, despite the charm and the presence of its big-name cast. Although this may sound quite damning, the film feels like an elongated TV pilot which I genuinely think would suit it better. Most murder mystery adaptations skimp on much of the details found in the book in order to wrap things up relatively quickly whereas something like this would be better served if it was given more time to breathe.

As I say, I have not yet read the book and frankly, I doubt I ever will because I already have quite a list of books to make my way through already. But watching the film, I got the sense that there were scenes missing from the novel - scenes that would have injected more humour in the running time or given the characters a bit more of a personality. I felt that things were wrapped up too quickly and conveniently so everything would fit into a nice, neat two-hour running time. I kept coming back to the folly of making a film out of the source material - something like this would be much more effective and enjoyable if it were a miniseries, which is something Netflix could easily have done. I don't understand why they thought a movie would work better, especially if it wasn't getting a theatrical release. It's not like they were ever hoping to recoup their losses, after all.

The Thursday Murder Club is possibly the most annoying kind of film there is: it's just fine. It's enjoyable enough without ever really pushing itself to the limits, simply happy to tread water in the knowledge that the legion of fans of the book will doubtless watch it anyway. The fabulous cast do their best but their characters aren't given enough time and space to win their way into our affections and the mystery itself isn't all that mysterious (I figured things out, which I hardly ever do). It's perfectly OK - not a disaster but perhaps not the rip-roaring success it possibly aspired to be.

Great For: family viewings (there is the barest minimum of swearing), British audiences, fans of the book or cosy murder mysteries in general

Not So Great For: sky high expectations, people who don't have Netflix, people who watch too many murder mysteries

Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery are both very enjoyable murder mysteries that effortlessly blend a decent narrative with a good amount of comedy. This is largely due to Daniel Craig's superb performance as flamboyant Southern investigator Benoit Blanc, blowing away any lingering memories audiences may have of Craig as Bond. A third film, Wake Up Dead Man, is due for release later in 2025 with Craig once again returning alongside series creator and director Rian Johnson and personally, I cannot wait. If you like your murder mysteries a bit more serious then Branagh's revival of Poirot will be better suited to you. Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile are brilliant updates on some popular (and previously filmed) stories featuring the Belgian detective while A Haunting In Venice is a more unusual and uneven affair.

Of course, murder mysteries aren't a new thing. While modern audiences have enjoyed the likes of See How They Run and Amsterdam, cinema has had more than its share of classics. Hitchcock was especially adept at combining elements of murder, mystery and suspense with films like Rear Window and Strangers On A Train while film noir also had plenty of examples like The Big Sleep and The Third Man. There are also loads of Christie adaptations as well - for some, Margaret Rutherford is the definite Miss Marple thanks to films like Murder, She Said and Peter Ustinov developed his own take on Poirot in films like the 1978 version of Death On The Nile.