Between them, Richard Osman's first four "Thursday Murder Club" novels sold more than ten million copies and sparked a publishing craze for so-called "cosy crime", said Kevin Maher in The Times. Small wonder, then, that Netflix's big-budget adaptation of the first title arrives "with the self-conscious swagger of a ready-made franchise".
Cracking cases
For those who haven't read the books, this well- made film follows the exploits of four pensioners living at Coopers Chase, a posh retirement home in Kent: there's former spy Elizabeth (Helen Mirren); retired psychiatrist Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley); trade union firebrand Ron (Pierce Brosnan); and new arrival Joyce (Celia Imrie), a former nurse. Once a week, they meet in the building's jigsaw room and pool their skills to crack unsolved murder cases.
Meanwhile, a shady property developer played by David Tennant plots to turn Coopers Chase into luxury flats; and when both he and his business partner (Geoff Bell) are found dead in mysterious circumstances, the amateur sleuths are "compelled into undercover and very active duty".
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'Funny and likeable'
The murder mystery that follows is less a whodunnit than "a half-hearted parody of one", said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph. In the books, Osman's characters occupy a space somewhere "between romanticism and pastiche". This doesn't really translate to film: even this A-list cast can't seem to work out "if they're playing people or spoofs".
There's little suspense to speak of, and the end result is a "thin and perfunctory" movie. It's certainly "undemanding", but that's sort of the point, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. "The Thursday Murder Club" is a "funny and likeable, if slightly bland" film which, as one character remarks, "feels just like a Sunday teatime TV crime drama".
