The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club (2025) opens with four residents of a retirement village meeting once a week to pick over unsolved murder files. Then somebody is killed on their own grounds and the hobby stops being a hobby. The lineup is close to a joke in itself: Helen Mirren as a retired MI6 officer, Pierce Brosnan as a retired union leader, Ben Kingsley as a retired psychiatrist, Celia Imrie as a retired trauma nurse. Each one arrives with a skill that genuinely matters. Around them are David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, Naomi Ackie and Richard E. Grant. The source is Richard Osman's 2020 debut novel. The director is Chris Columbus, the man behind Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter films, which explains why the film produces warmth rather than danger. It premiered in Leicester Square on 21 August 2025 and reached Netflix a week later. Reviewers enjoyed the cast and found the story slight. It runs 118 minutes. Good for: cosy crime, British ensemble acting, and old age written without pity. Less good for: there is no real suspense here. The solution is guessable, and the novel's best asset, its narrating voice, does not survive the adaptation.