Summary:

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?

I had heard about The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman from the moment it came out. At the time, I still worked at the library, and it was constantly on hold for many patrons.

Recently, I finally got around to reading the book, and I really enjoyed it! I loved how it switched POVs and allowed the reader to see into the mind of the main characters, but also the possible suspects. 

The main characters were fun to read, and the overall murder mystery made sense and everything connected well with each other. 

I ended up giving the book 5 stars, and I immediately knew the next step would be to watch the Netflix movie.

Seeing the cast, I had a lot of excitement. I felt like the actors (Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley, and Pierce Brosnan) were perfect, and I couldn’t wait to see the book come to life. 

However, that’s where my enjoyment slows down. 

I shouldn’t have been shocked that so many changes were made. I’ve seen too many book to movie adaptations in my lifetime. 

Overall, I gave the movie 3 out of 5 stars. While I still enjoyed the movie as a whole, as an adaptation, it could have been better. 

In this review, I will be focusing on three major changes seen in the movie. So, spoilers ahead.

Change 1: Elizabeth

One of the biggest changes to me was Elizabeth and the focus on her. While I mentioned earlier that the book switched POVs, our entry to the novel and our main emotional connection is Joyce. 

In the book, whenever we venture into the nearby towns and delve deeper into emotions, it’s always Joyce and somebody else. 

However, there are times when Joyce is sidelined, and the movie just focuses on Elizabeth as our primary character. While I understand we want to focus on Helen Mirren as much as possible, we lose out on the key of the group. 

Not only that, but Elizabeth’s personality is different as well. In the book, she is seen as extremely coy and evasive, especially when it comes to giving any personal information. 

Whenever she is asked about what her job was before she retired, she never gives a concrete answer, and when it comes to emotions, she only shows how she truly feels behind closed doors. 

In the movie, this intrigue is dismissed more for shock value. She is very open that she was a member of MI6, and that she did dangerous missions back in the day. 

One of the biggest disappointments with the character change is that she isn’t as level-headed and introspective as she is in the book. This leads to a change in the ending of the book with one of the characters we get introduced to and form a bond with.

Change 2: Connecting the Murders

Throughout the book, there are three different crimes/murders that the group has to solve. While it turns out that each of the murders were caused by different people for different reasons, they did a great job in connecting them together.

However, in the movie, the murders felt very isolated. It felt like once they solved one of the murders, they could then focus on the other. 

This made the overall storyline feel disjointed. 

Change 3: Relationships

Because of the book switching POVs, we were able to see how different characters interacted with others. 

Based on the pattern, I bet you know where this is going, and you would be correct. There were many relationships that were not explored either because we didn’t focus on them a lot, or the character was completely rewritten (sorry Bernard). 

One of my favorite relationships in the book that was completely rewritten was with Donna and Chris. While they are still coworkers on the police force, their relationship on screen does not develop in the friendly camaraderie that we see them form in the book.

Instead of seeing them become friends and Donna setting him up with her mom, we instead see Donna become Elizabeth’s sidekick who listens to every word she says without doing her own research to support it.

Overall, the core of the book was the relationships between the characters and how they worked together. We were able to get to know the characters better, and this would have been better suited as a TV show. 

While there were more changes seen throughout, I feel like these changed the overall structure of the story and any possibility of following the plotlines of the following books. 

Again, I really enjoyed the book, and I look forward to reading the others in the series.