‘The Thursday Murder Club’ review: criminal Netflix adaptation is dead boring

A round of applause for Richard Osman, please: the BBC quiz host-turned-bestselling author who’s now seeing his debut mystery novel picked up by Steven Spielberg’s production company for a starry Netflix adaptation. Shame, then, that it’s pretty bad.

The first in Osman’s soon-to-be five-part book franchise, The Thursday Murder Club is your grandma’s fave cosy crime caper (Only Murders In The Building serving Victoria sponge, Last Of The Summer Wine with more bludgeoning…), telling the story of four pensioners solving whodunnits in a quaint Chilterns retirement home.

There’s Elizabeth, the retired MI6 chief (Helen Mirren), ex-union man Ron (Pierce Brosnan), Ibrahim the psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley) and former nurse Joyce (Celia Imrie) – all meeting up once a week in the games room to pick through unsolved police cases. There’s also David Tennant’s bullish businessman, the sadly deteriorating mind of Jonathan Pryce’s old academic, Richard E. Grant’s oddly cast gangster, Naomi Ackie’s over-eager PC and Daniel Mays’ inept detective. Basically everyone who’s ever won a BAFTA is here, bringing the kind of vintage pedigree that feels all the more disappointing to see wasted.

There’s a grisly new murder close to home to kick things off, of course, but that’s not the slaying that matters. The real crime here is making us sit through such undeniable dross.

Most of the cast are off the hook. With the exception of Brosnan’s bizarre Irish/Cockney/Dutch accent and Mays’ cartoonishly dumb detective, everyone else is doing the best they can. Director Chris Columbus (Harry Potter, The Goonies, Gremlins, Home Alone and a dozen other classics) deserves a lot of the blame for his aggressively un-cinematic style – sucking all the charm and tension out of every scene and pitching as hard towards ITV3 as possible – but he’s not acting alone.

All clues point instead to Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote’s script, turning what could have been a sweet, funny murder mystery into a thin, lifeless slog through someone else’s better ideas. For a detective story with four Miss Marples, it’s odd to see none of them given an actual character (Elizabeth likes solving mysteries, Ron likes West Ham, Ibrahim likes facts, Joyce bakes cakes). Odd contrivances, flat jokes and under-written asides swirl around a signposted plot that loses more tension the longer it runs. One minute it’s trying too hard to prove old people “have still got it, thank you very much”, the next it’s making fun of them for not knowing how to use a phone.

There are glimpses of what could have been a decent film here – something charming, witty and exciting, with a cast of greats given room to soar – but whatever might have been is still stuck inside the pages of the book. Proof that you can take a bestseller, a legendary director and a terrific cast and still murder them all. What could have been a House Of Games is all just a bit… Pointless.