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The charms of The Thursday Murder Club, Netflix’s adaptation of Richard Osman’s 2020 novel, are slender but sturdy. A group of three not-so-old folks—the term senior citizens is far too stuffy for them—meet every Thursday in the common room of Coopers Chase, a cozy-luxe retirement village, to tackle unsolved crimes. As they ponder the mystery of a young woman’s grisly 1973 death-by-stabbing, they’re sidetracked by a murder in their own midst: One of the Coopers Chase landlords, a man with thuggish business connections, is found dead. Delighted to have fresh, local material to work with, the stalwart group set out to uncover who did it, and why. The suspects include a greasy ne-er-do-well with a financial interest in Cooper’s Chase, a menacing gangster whom everyone had presumed dead, and even the offspring of one of their very own members.
The plot of The Thursday Murder Club twists and turns gently, like wind chimes in a light breeze. It’s one of those movies you watch not necessarily for its whodunnit complexities, but for the pleasure of watching a group of actors having fun, in a storybook English-countryside setting complete with happy, well-kept flower beds and cemeteries dotted with gravestones both ancient and new. The director is Chris Columbus, perhaps best known for Home Alone and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, not to mention Mrs. Doubtfire and two Harry Potter installments. He’s a director who screams “Fun!” and there’s a fair bit of fun-screaming here: At one point the Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” breaks out on the soundtrack to remind everyone that these over-sixty folks aren’t ready for the grave yet, dadburnit. The point doesn’t need to be driven home quite that obviously.
Read more: How the Low-Stakes Murder Mystery Took Over Pop Culture
Still, The Thursday Murder Club is so good-natured, and so gorgeous to look at, that to carp about it just seems churlish. Veteran cinematographer Don Burgess gives the…
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