By Luke Thomas, September 16, 2025
Amongst Netflix’s steady churning of murder mysteries, it’s latest release of Chris Colombus’s “The Thursday Murder Club” is another mystery to add to the list, though likely not your “Favorites” one.
Based on Richard Osman’s 2020 novel of the same name, “The Thursday Murder Club” unfolds at Cooper’s Chase, a luxury retirement home. Found in the jigsaw puzzle wing, the titular club is made up of former unionist Ron Ritchie (Pierce Brosnan), ex-spy and weirdly impolite Elizabeth Best (Helen Mirren) and former therapist Ibrahim Arif (Ben Kingsley). The three seniors meet weekly to investigate unsolved murder cases.
Their latest cold case, “The Woman in White,” has hit a medical roadblock, so the club recruits Joyce Meadowcroft, a former nurse played by Celia Imrie, to assist the club. Also along for the mystery is overlooked police officer Donna De Freitas, played by Naomi Ackie, whom the club befriends to draw case information out of.
It’s when Tony Curran, a stakeholder in Cooper’s Chase and friend of the club, is killed, that the Thursday Murder Club is left to solve an open case for the first time, to the delight of Joyce. Furthering concerns, the club must also find a way to protect their retirement home, as the second stakeholder Ian Ventham, played by David Tennant who’s really hamming up his role, is now in primary control and seeking to tear the land up.
It’s a perfectly adequate inciting incident, though it leaves the club to abandon their cold case until the plot can put full focus on it again.
On top of solving the murders, the club members also all have something familial going on — minus Ibrahim, who ends up not having much to do in the plot in general. Elizabeth’s husband has dementia, Ron’s stuck in his son’s past, and Joyce’s daughter wants her to move out of Cooper’s Chase. Elizabeth and Ron’s family matters run parallel to the plot, while Joyce’s daughter is barely relevant in the film, seemingly only being included to cover plot points from the novel.
It’s a very straightforward movie in terms of both sleuthing and writing. Clues are found in a linear way, and the initial mystery is practically spelled out near the start. But, it’s entertaining to see the antics that lead the retirees to stray onto the correct path.
It’s the formula you expect from Netflix at this point: a watered-down film that doesn’t take many risks, leading to most things not being especially strong or weak. It can be funny at times, but none of the jokes are especially noteworthy, so as a comedy it’s inadequate.
The formula certainly doesn’t make the film bad, but it does make it unremarkable. While Colombus being at the helm helps with the light nature of the film, it lacks the warmth of his ‘90s to mid-2000s run. It’s unequivocally trying to be a “cozy mystery” but doesn’t have the wit to go all the way.
By the latter third of the film, things are left on a rough note. Elizabeth ends up taking center stage, with the rest of the characters having little to do, and the finale takes a narrative departure from the ending of the novel, stripping the Thursday Murder Club of the empathy they had in the book. The ending reinforces you’ve been watching a watered-down adaptation of a much more elaborate novel.
While “The Thursday Murder Club” fits solidly into Colombus’ catalog of family films, it’s so stuck to Netflix’s formula that it doesn’t make a good case for those seeking a substantive murder mystery. But, with the director’s eagerness to make another, it may not be long before we see the club back on screen, for better or for worse.