We all love a whodunit now it seems, and whether it’s Kenneth Branagh’s version of Hercule Poirot, or Daniel Craig’s lusciously accented Benoit Blanc, there seems to be a rush on to find yet more eccentric and novel crusaders to point the finger of truth at a guilty party. For this reason alone, I can’t think of a better source for such a thing as Richard Osman’s series of books about a crime solving gang of pensioners who operate out of the world’s most palatial retirement home. While I have to admit that I haven’t actually yet read The Thursday Murder Club or any other book from the series, the set-up seems rife with possibilities and has attracted an all star cast of mature thespians who are all raring to prove that they’ve still got what it takes to finger the odd murderer (ooer).
Can Chris Columbus kick start yet another franchise from a successful series of books, thus ensuring that Netflix scores itself yet another streaming hit? They’d better find out soon, because no one in the main cast is what you’d call a spring chicken anymore.
Welcome to the luxurious Cooper’s Chase retirement village that seems to be Hogwart’s for pensioners. Whether it’s jigsaws, llamas or art classes with nude models, every whim you could possibly have in the winter of your life seems to be catered to and it’s certainly not got any of those bullying orderleis you get from those crooked retirement homes you see on 60 Minutes. Lurking within its picturesque walls are the Thursday Murder Club, a quartet of friends who gather together once a week to study cold cases in the hope of solving what the police couldn’t. Heading up the group is Elizabeth Best, the go-getting, no-nonsense leader who seems to have something of a shadowy past in the secret service and who dearly loves her dementia suffering husband. Next up is prissy ex-psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif who never seems to be seen without his suit and bow tie and rounding up the original team is swaggering, Ron Ritchie, a former union leader and something of a silver fox. Into their group wanders Joyce Meadowcroft, an excitable retired nurse who is recruited due to her medical input on such things as stab wounds and blood loss, but as they cast their twinkling eyes over a Murder that occured back in 1973, a fresh slaying happens almost right on their very doorstep.
It seems that the owners of the Cooper’s Chase retirement home are locked in a bit of contention about what to do with it. Big hearted geezer Tony Curran wants to keep the place intact due to his aunt being a resident, but his partner, the shifty Ian Ventham has plans to turf all the old folks out, turn the neighbouring church and graveyard into flats and use the retirement home as event space. Needless to say, when someone turns up dead, the Thursday Murder Club is all over it like lemon drizzle over a cake, but even when they manage to get inside information about the case from novice copper PC Donna De Freitas, it proves to be far more complex that they ever could have imagined.
I kind of feel that it doesn’t actually matter what I write here, as regardless of the overall quality of this adaption of Osman’s cherished novel, the Netflix model will probably announce this a success and start churning out sequels to The Thursday Murder Club as soon as they possibly can. It makes a certain amount of sense considering that there’s three more books ripe for the adapting with a fourth on the way thus meaning that a full blown franchise is all but inevitable (health of the actors permitting). However, while I don’t have prior experience of the books to draw from, I have to feel that both Chris Columbus and Amblin Entertainment has played things frustratingly safe and have tried to add a tried and true template to the series-to-be that actually sells it short. Simply put, Chris Columbus has taken the first book and essentially tried to make Harry Potter for old people.
I’ve never been overly fond of the super-twee world he fashioned out of Harry Potter, but I’ll admit that the ludicrously old fashioned version of England that he created made a certain amount of sense in regards to world-building a universe full of wizards, dark lords and school uniform. However, when trying to port over a slightly more mature version of a fantastical quaint UK, he kind of ends up creating a movie so safe and inoffensive, it loses virtually all of its identity. It also feels like Columbus and Netflix has set out to make a film about old people, directly for old people, which actually feels like its betraying the material and everything a film version could have achieved. Yes, of course people north of 65 deserve to have movies made about them, but surely you would have been more of a service if you’d targeted your murder mystery at a wider age group and given it the unpredictable vitality the characters in the film supposedly possess.
I’m not saying they had to go all Harry Brown with it and make it a gritty version of Se7en for octogenarians, but if we want people to take the elderly seriously, why keep putting them in something that’s about as exciting as an episode of midmorning television?
There’s also a sense that the film isn’t doing the characters much of a service either. Helen Mirren does well as Elizabeth by essential transporting her spy character over from Red with slightly less sex appeal and way less belt-fed machine guns, but possibly nailing the tone best is Celia Imrie’s Joyce who seems positively dizzy to be solving crimes while baking an endless number of huge cakes for people. However, the male members of the group fare noticably less well with both Ben Kingsley’s Ibrahim and Pierce Brosnan’s Ron being virtually useless when actually trying to figure anything out; fuck, Brosnan can’t even seem to figure out what accent to stick with let alone cracking a progressively complex murder case.
A supporting cast that contains such names as David Tennant, Naomi Ackie and Daniel Mays do well enough, but even they’re not enough to stop The Thursday Murder Club from falling between the cracks that exist between Knives Out and Only Murders In The Building and from what I’ve heard about the books, I’m genuinely surprised that the film isn’t funnier too, especially considering the cast involved.
Instead of mining the originality of the books, Chris Columbus instead is content to coast on the basic concept and the recognizable cast and tells a story that’s disappointingly flat and visually quite boring.
Maybe the makers were afraid that to add a bit of zip or innovation to the multiple layers of the mystery in fear of alienating an audience expecting a more sedate, age-approriate adventure. However, as the previously mentioned Only Murders In The Building has already proven, you don’t need to spoon feed the fun just because there’s a few extra wrinkles on the cast. Best call the Thursday Murder Club in, Chris Columbus just killed the excitement.
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