Abhiroop Das
Directed by Chris Columbus, Netflix’s ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ centers around four retired pensioners with an appetite for solving mysteries. The group comes together every Thursday to don their detective caps and solve increasingly challenging cold cases. What starts out as a fun way to pass time, however, turns into a serious fiasco when someone very close to them is murdered in Coopers Chase Retirement Village, the place they all call home. Soon, the murder conspiracy begins to grow, and new secrets come forth from all directions. Ultimately, it is up to the members of the club to navigate through a sea of red herrings and figure out the right clues. With the killer possibly lurking amongst them, the case gets more serious by the day, but nothing can come between the protagonists and the truth. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Thursday Murder Club is a Fictitious Club Born Out of the Author’s Unique Perspective
While the Thursday Murder Club is a fictional club of four retired friends, its construction is informed by some real-life experiences. Originally created by writer and television presenter Richard Osman for his eponymous book, the club is brought to screen by writers Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote. During a podcast with Penguin, Osman detailed the inspirations behind his creations, primarily focusing on his visit to a real retirement home. He said: “I found it very beautiful. Everyone’s in their seventies and, you know, we’re told to think certain things about people in their seventies. But they were having such a laugh. They were drinking, gossiping. There are loads of politics. Extraordinary people from loads of different backgrounds all mixing together.”
It is this visual that made the idea of a murder club click for Osman. He explained: “I thought, ‘Well, if there was a murder here, these people would solve it, that’s for sure.’ And that’s where the idea came from, really.” This idea is central to the fictional Thursday Murder Club. While it has no direct real-life antecedents, it is driven by the cast’s dynamic. Actors Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie, who essay Elizabeth, Ron, Ibrahim, and Joyce respectively, poured their hearts into the role, balancing each other’s crafts to bring the story to life. In a conversation with Flip Your Wig, Kingsley described the group’s performance as a Mozart quartet, with each actor bringing their own flavour to create a perfect whole. Brosnan added to the comparison, stating that while the actors haven’t decided who plays which instrument, their music ultimately turned out to be great.
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Penny Grey is the Founder of The Thursday Murder Club
The Thursday Murder Club’s creator, Penny Grey, also takes on an important role in the narrative. Although one of the founding members, she begins the story in hospice care and thus is unable to participate in the mysteries. Much like the club itself, Penny is a fictional construct created by Richard Osman and later adapted by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote. A retired police detective, Penny is responsible for bringing in the cold cases from her time, which makes her background particularly unique. As such, there is a possibility that her past draws references to the history of the United Kingdom’s police forces. Elizabeth mentions that Penny Grey was, at her time, one of the few women to join the force. This adds up with the real-life circumstances of police work in that era, which was marked by discrimination and setbacks.
Up until the 1970s, the police forces in the United Kingdom saw rampant segregation between male and female officers. They were forced to have separate ranks and divisions, as well as duties and even basic facilities, leading to widespread discrimination. However, the situation began to change with the passing of the Equal Pay Act in 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975. With changes in the law, gender based segregation came to an end, and women police officers finally received a fair chance to carve out their name in the field. To that end, Penny Grey can possibly serve as a composite of the various pioneering police officers who broke through gender based barriers and became renowned law enforcers. However, Penny’s complex psyche, as unravelled over the course of the movie, also reiterates the imagined element present in the character.
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