NOW ENTERTAINMENT Aug. 24 Month 00--30, 00,2025 2023
Your Weekly TV Entertainment Brought To You By Olean Times Herald & The Bradford Era
Four retired friends keep active by solving cold cases — and one fresh, local murder — in “The Thursday Murder Club,” premiering Thursday, Aug. 28, on Netflix. Henry Lloyd Hughes and Helen Mirren star in “The Thursday Murder Club”
Cover Story Eccentric extracurriculars: Osman’s ‘Thursday Murder Club’ meets on Netflix By Dana Simpson Beginning in the 1970s, “Quincy” ruled investigative television for the older adult demographic. By 1984, Agatha Christie’s titular British amateur detective Miss Marple took up the mantle on BBC. These days, there is a new detective collective coming to the small screen. This time, however, it comes in film form. Starring Helen Mirren (“The Queen,” 2006), Pierce Brosnan (“The Thomas Crown Affair,” 1999), Celia Imrie (“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” 2011) and Ben Kingsley (“Gandhi,” 1982) in leading roles, “The Thursday Murder Club” premieres Thursday, Aug. 28, on Netflix. Based on the 2020 novel of the same name by English novelist and television presenter Richard Osman, “The Thursday Murder Club” is described by Netflix Tudum as “a whodunit with teeth — false ones, of course.”
Set in a retirement community in a fictional town in Kent, England, four friends — ex-intelligence agent Elizabeth (Mirren), former union activist Ron (Brosnan), former psychiatrist Ibrahim (Kingsley) and retired nurse Joyce (Imrie) — would prefer to keep their minds active by solving murders rather than playing bridge like the other residents. But when the group finds themselves faceto-face with a real murder, the stakes are raised and solving the crime becomes much more for the friends than a clever and entertaining way to pass the time. Directed by filmmaker Chris Columbus, of “Home Alone” (1990), “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993) and Harry Potter franchise fame, the new film straddles the line between the comedic and the macabre, placing death squarely at the center of the conversation. “There’s a wonderful mystery at its core, so mystery
fans will be very happy,” Columbus told Tudum regarding the film, adding that “thematically, it’s interesting that we’ve got four elderly people who are living in a retirement community and who are fascinated by death and murder. They are facing their own demise, yet at the same time they are obsessed with studying cold cases. I fell in love thematically with that. It’s comedic, but it’s also very emotional.” While Columbus serves as the film’s sole director, another well-known director is closely attached to the project. Steven Spielberg, the mind behind such films as “Jaws” (1975), “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (1984) and “Jurassic Park” (1993) among many others, founded Amblin Entertainment, the film company co-producing “The Thursday Murder Club” in conjunction with Netflix. And much like Spielberg with his seven-time Oscar
nominated “The Fabelmans” (2022), author Osman found the basis for his tale lurking in the beauty and absurdity of real life. “You just sit and chat with these people and they’ve lived these extraordinary lives,” Osman said of the retirees living in his real-life mother’s community; one not dissimilar to the village in “The Thursday Murder Club.” “You hear these amazing stories and gossip and wisdom, [and] you think, ‘These people are so overlooked.’” “The idea that these people with their wisdom and their invisibility would be the perfect people to solve [a crime] is exactly where ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ comes from,” Osman elaborated, adding, “put them together, and they can achieve anything.” Don’t miss the chance to join the “The Thursday Murder Club” when it premieres Thursday, Aug. 28, on Netflix.