Murder he wrote
He’s always felt 80, so creating senior citizen sleuths felt natural for author Richard Osman. Now Steven Spielberg is bringing them to the screen…
Netflix
- Michael Hodges
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Final, irrefutable proof that the Thursday Murder Club belongs to the world and not just Richard Osman’s imagination came last summer. The author and television presenter watched as a helicopter landed by a stately home in Berkshire, then Steven Spielberg stepped out to greet him. “It was an absolute dream,” says Osman, still a little bewildered by this Hollywood turn of events. “I very rarely ask people for selfies, but I thought, ‘I can’t let this encounter pass without commemorating it.’”
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Spielberg was there on set as his film and TV company, Amblin Entertainment, is producing the screen adaptation. The book has been a worldwide success, but began as a very personal project for Osman. After being intrigued by his mother Brenda’s retirement village, the Pointless creator conceived his own version, Coopers Chase, a country estate given over to genteel living for the retired, where a quartet of senior citizen sleuths – the Murder Club of the title – initially investigate 1970s cold cases before finding themselves on the trail of an active killer.
“I have spent more time with these characters than anyone in the entire world,” says Osman. “So the idea that anyone is playing them on screen is entirely absurd for me because they are so real – they exist in my heart.”
Steven Spielberg visits the sets of The Thursday Murder Club. Sir Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren, Steven Spielberg, Richard Osman, Chris Columbus, Celia Imrie, Pierce Brosnan. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024 Netflix
Nonetheless, producer Spielberg and former Home Alone and Harry Potter director Chris Columbus went ahead and cast Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley as the novel’s lead characters – respectively, retired(ish) intelligence officer Elizabeth, nurse Joyce, trade unionist Ron and psychiatrist Ibrahim – with roles, too, for Richard E Grant, David Tennant and Jonathan Pryce.
“When they told me who they had, I was blown away,” says Osman, though one choice was no surprise. “People had spent three years shouting ‘Helen Mirren’ at me in the street because they all wanted Helen to play Elizabeth.”
Tom Ellis and Pierce Brosnan in The Thursday Murder Club. Giles Keyte/Netflix
If this all feels faintly unreal, then it’s of a piece with Osman’s own rather unexpected back story. Born in 1970, he grew up in Haywards Heath, West Sussex. A geeky lad in heavy-framed specs with an eye condition that limited his sight, he was only nine when his parents’ marriage broke up. His mother had to scrape a living to bring up Osman and his brother, Mat. “My mum had a tough time of it,” he says. “She had no money… it was a proper struggle.”
I grew up in a very low-income family and every pound that I earn is a delight
Richard Osman
Osman developed an eating addiction, but despite these limitations, or perhaps driven by them – “Whatever my issues were, I was enormously ambitious,” he says. “I wanted to be at the heart of things.” Osman built a successful career as a TV producer at Endemol UK, where he created and then hosted hits such as Pointless and House of Games, before turning to writing.He published his first novel, The Thursday Murder Club, in 2020, and has gone on to sell more than 10 million books – and they have made him wealthy.
David Tennant and Henry Lloyd-Hughes in The Thursday Murder Club. Giles Keyte/Netflix
“I grew up in a very low-income family and every pound that I earn is an absolute delight to me,” he says. “I care about looking after people, and about empathy and kindness, but money is not a bad thing. It’s what my whole family have always wanted, what most families in this country want. I want to work hard and I want to be paid for it.”
The Thursday Murder Club kick-started an international craze for British cosy crime that Spielberg was quick to recognise. Yet the genre, like the popular TV Osman loves, is sometimes sniffed at. (He waxes at length to me on the brilliance of Stacey Solomon’s Sort Your Life Out and, beyond that, on television and film in general in his podcast with Marina Hyde, The Rest Is… Entertainment.) Does that get under Osman’s skin? “I’m too old to be offended,” he says. “There are so many people in the world who are sniffy about so many things, and it doesn’t make them happier. If I ever say something is good on social media and someone slags it off I say, ‘You don’t need to slag it off, just reply with something you love.’ That’s all you need.”
Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley and Naomi Ackie in The Thursday Murder Club. Giles Keyte/Netflix
Osman’s interest in crime was sparked in childhood by his grandfather, a police officer in Brighton. “I was absolutely fascinated by any story he could tell me about wrongdoing,” he says. “If he pointed down a street and said, ‘That’s a brothel, that’s a drug dealer’s house,’ I’d be thrilled. I like to write about Oliver Bonas and Tesco Metro, but also the flat above where someone is cultivating two million pounds’ worth of cannabis plants.” This rubbing-up of the everyday against often murderous criminality is a large part of his books’ appeal. That and Osman’s deep sympathy for older characters.
Richard Osman. David Levenson/Getty Images
Rather than portraying them simply as colourful eccentrics or victims, he gives pensioners with hard-earned life skills due respect and agency. “I like to write about older people, I like to write about loneliness, I like to write about unlikely friendships,” he says. “A lot of people say to me, ‘I want to end up at Coopers Chase, where stuff is happening.’ I’ve always felt about 80 in my head, which is why I find it so easy to access these characters.”
I ask Osman which character is most like him. Perhaps Joyce – the inquisitive, clever nurse, who bears more than a little resemblance to his mother? “Deep down I think I’m probably 40 per cent Ibrahim, 30 per cent Joyce, 20 per cent Ron and 10 per cent Elizabeth,” he says. “I know what they’re going to say at any given time. They all exist within me.”
The Thursday Murder Club. Giles Keyte/Netflix
Will seeing those characters portrayed by Mirren, Imrie, Brosnan and Kingsley affect him when he works on future Thursday Murder Club books? “When I was writing the next novel there was a moment with Ibrahim when Ben Kingsley came into my head for a second because he really does have the look of Ibrahim, but I thought, ‘You already know who Ibrahim is, he is very close to you.’”
And what about the reverse: does he approve of the characters’ representation in the film and the inevitable changes that director Columbus had to make? “There was never a moment during filming when I thought, ‘This is different to what’s in my head.’ Because if it wasn’t different it would be the worst thing ever made. What’s in my head is nine hours where every single line of dialogue and every single internal monologue is there. The world’s most boring film.”
Chris Columus with Helen Mirren, who plays murder-solving retiree Elizabeth. Netflix
In the Thursday Murder Club, the pensioners are necessarily shaded by the spectres of dementia, death and loneliness, which Osman feels his own struggles attune him to. “When I write I’m able to access unhappiness and loneliness,” he says. “But I also think getting older makes you happy. You get a bit of perspective, and you do realise that you’re allowed to be in the world, you feel less shame about yourself.”
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This happiness must be helped by the books’ success and the deals he’s making – he tells me there will be a television series of his novel We Solve Murders – but he credits much of it to his wife, the actor Ingrid Oliver. “Ingrid has made me very happy.” She is in the film, playing Joyce’s daughter Joanna, but Osman isn’t. “I thought everyone would go, ‘Why is Richard in the back of a police station in Kent?’”
Authors
Michael Hodges
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