★★

Richard Osman’s “The Thursday Murder Club” screams – or, rather, ahems – Sunday night on the BBC. It’s so obvious that a character in the erroneous, Netflix-funded, Chris Columbus movie that has actually been produced even jokes about the consanguinity. This is not to demean the quality of Osman’s, deservedly popular, storytelling but to acknowledge the extreme particularity of his prose. Hollywood cannot hope to tap into Osman’s very British niche and so Columbus’ film is fine watch but bland and transparently softened for international sensibilities.

The film’s want for personality is most apparent in its opening stretch, which proves slow and surprisingly uninvolving. Celia Imrie is Joyce, former nurse and new resident at Cooper’s Chase. Osman’s vision of a sleepy village for the over sixties is here upgraded to a swanky retirement home, reminiscent of that drawn for Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet, rather than any relatable picture of contemporary pensioner living. One suspects that the residents of Columbus’ Cooper’s Chase didn’t bat an eye at last year’s winter fuel cuts. It’s all gloss and a little disaffecting when we’re latter asked to care about a proposed closure for the home, which makes Hogwarts look basic, with its wild and illogical floor plan.

Her lust for life undiminished, Joyce soon finds herself recruited by the Thursday Murder Club, an in-situ trio of crime-solving pensioners. Helen Mirren – fan cast by every reader of the book since 2020 – leads the group, as retired spy Elizabeth, with Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley present and correct as underwritten foot soldiers Ron and Ibrahim. A consequence of their casted calibre, the set do rather stand out among a collective of more anonymous fellow residents. It doesn’t help that each appears far more glamorous than those in the background. Only Jonathan Pryce really affects here, clinging on to a declining sense of self as Stephen, Elizabeth’s husband. Less is more.

Things eventually spice up with the murder of Tony Curran (Geoff Bell), the only man capable of preventing wrongun Ian Ventham (David Tennant) from converting the local cemetery into luxury flats. Daniel Mays heads up the police contingent as the hapless DCI Chris Hudson, with Naomi Ackie’s more junior PC Donna De Freitas at least showing a hint of promise. It’s not all that tough to see where things are going here, owing, in the main, to plotting that allows viewers to watch while doing the ironing or popping on the kettle without hitting pause. 

A dense script from Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote nails the occasional gag – a life drawing session earns a chuckle and there’s a pleasing nod to Mirren’s old Queening days – but clunks in the dialogue and flow. Take our first introduction to Stephen. Asked after her husband, Elizabeth all but replies: ‘oh, you know, he has dementia and that’s sad.’ Where Osman’s writing makes hay with the human condition, Brand and Heathcote appear only superficially engaged. There’s a broad understanding here that aging in the world of the young is no fun – ‘I’d welcome a burglar, be nice to have a visitor’ – but none of the acerbic insight required to challenge the stereotype. It’s not enough to simply permit pensioners to solve crimes – Christie did that decades ago.

Though far from groundbreaking, Osman’s books have enjoyed a place at the avant-garde in recent years, leading a revival in cozy crime and celebrity authorship. None have matched the deftness and intelligence of his style. To this end, Columbus’ film feels less an expansion of Osman’s world than one more copycat compartment in a train that just keeps steaming on.

T.S.