The Thursday Murder Club’s Stacked Cast Elevates a Delightful Cozy Mystery 

The concept of little old ladies solving crimes in the village is a British entertainment staple from time immemorial, from Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, to more modern versions like Anne Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope. In The Thursday Murder Club, a Netflix feature film adaptation of Richard Osman’s bestselling novel of the same name, the elderly crime solving vibes are turned up to eleven, with not one, not two, but four retirees joining forces to try and find the killer in a real-life murder, and maybe save their beloved community home at the same time. 

Set at a picturesque retirement village called Coopers Chase, the story follows the titular Thursday Murder Club, a group of well-off pensioners who are secretly true crime junkies in their spare time. They gather each week in one of the facility’s puzzle rooms to discuss and investigate the specifics of unsolved cold cases. There’s Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), the obvious leader of the group, whose mysterious background in “international affairs” has left her with a lot of useful contacts; Ron (Pierce Brosnan), a well-known former trade unionist who made his name as an activist at sit-ins and picket lines; and Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), a psychiatrist who specialized in treating war veterans with PTSD. Though the group all come from different backgrounds, their enjoyment of crime solving has brought them together and formed a genuine bond between them. The cases are an excuse for them all to get together—but it’s clear almost from their first scenes together that this group doesn’t really need one. They’re already family.   

The story begins as the group is attempting to solve a particularly thorny case involving a woman who fell to her death from a window after being attacked and stabbed in her home. What killed her—the fall or the blood loss? How long could she have survived before succumbing to her injuries? Why didn’t the boyfriend—who claimed he saw a robber flee the scene—do more to try and save her? In need of medical expertise, the gang turns to new resident Joyce (Celia Imrie) for help. A widow and former nurse, Joyce has come to Coopers Chase in the hopes of making late-in-life friends to help ease her loneliness in the wake of her husband’s passing. And although the Thursday Murder Club may not have been the ideal friends her hedge fund manager daughter (Ingrid Oliver) wanted, her presence is an instant boost to the group, and they start positing new theories about their investigation almost immediately. 

Unfortunately, things get complicated quickly when one of the owners of Coopers Chase mysteriously turns up dead, right after the other begins to move ahead with plans to demolish the nearby cemetery for luxury apartments and turn the retirement center into an event space. Can the Thursday Murder Club solve a real crime and find a way to protect the home they love at the same time? It’s not a spoiler to say—of course they can. The emotional hook of this film isn’t whether the Thursday Murder Club will save the day, but how they’ll manage it. And the answer is: With a tremendous amount of wit and charm. From leaning into stereotypes of doddering old people, playing dumb, or plying investigators with copious amounts of cake and tea, these retirees are relentlessly clever, resourceful, and easy to root for. 

To be fair, there’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about this film. Like any murder mystery, there are multiple red herrings and false leads, some credulity-straining coincidences, a surprise second death, and an unrealistic acceptance of a group of distinctly non-police types taking the lead on solving a violent crime. Most of the characters outside of our core four pensioners are thinly sketched at best, and a fair number of viewers will probably guess whodunnit well before the movie tells you. But it also doesn’t really matter. The Thursday Murder Club’s familiar pieces are expertly stitched together into a whole that feels both complete and satisfying, bolstered by a cast that’s clearly having too much fun together to take anything all that seriously. It’s true, the specifics of The Thursday Murder Club’s story aren’t anything special, but the film is fairly remarkable in the way it centers and uplifts older characters, giving them stories that don’t revolve around distant family, precocious grandkids, or the bleak prospect of their impending deaths. Yes, the club’s members are all pushing eighty, but they’re each vibrant, fully realized characters who still have things they want out of life.