Sometimes you have to kill your darlings... The Thursday Murder Club's major booktofilm changes explained

Sometimes you have to kill your darlings...

The Thursday Murder Club's major book-to-film changes explained

Sometimes you have to kill your darlings...

By Maureen Lee Lenker

Maureen Lee Lenker

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at ** with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, *Ms. Magazine*, *The Hollywood Reporter*, and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, *It Happened One Fight*, is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

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August 28, 2025 9:00 a.m. ET

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Pamela Dorman Books; Giles Keyte/Netflix

- Richard Osman's bestselling novel, *The Thursday Murder Club,* is now a feature film, which hit Netflix on Thursday.

- The film, starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie, follows a group of retirees obsessed with solving cold cases, until a real murder in their community prompts them into action.

- Here, we catalog all the major differences between Osman's novel and the film, including which characters and B-plots didn't make the cut.

**This article contains spoilers about *The Thursday Murder Club.***

As sure as a crime novel will have suspects and clues, a film adaptation of a novel will have changes from page to screen.

*The Thursday Murder Club, *based on the novel of the same name by Richard Osman, is no exception. The film, starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, and Ben Kingsley as the titular club members, hit Netflix on Thursday. In spirit, it's by and large the same story.

The Thursday Murder Club, which consists of Elizabeth (Mirren), Ron (Brosnan), Ibrahim (Kingsley), and newcomer Joyce (Imrie), meets every Thursday in the Jigsaw Room of their retirement community, Cooper's Chase. When local developer Tony Curran is murdered, the Thursday Murder Club decides to put their cold case-solving skills to good use, meddling in the investigation of DCI Chris Hudson and his colleague Donna de Freitas. The bodies pile up when Tony's business partner Ian Ventham is also murdered, jabbed in the arm with a needle full of fentanyl while engaging with angry protestors trying to stop his demolition of their town cemetery. There's also a third body involved when contractor Bodgan digs up a bonus set of bones in the cemetery, providing a potential motive for the Ventham killing and creating a third mystery to solve in the process.

Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, author Richard Osman (front), Helen Mirren, and Celia Imrie.

Courtesy of Netflix

"I was just mesmerized by it," director Chris Columbus tells * *of the novel. "It was unlike most murder mysteries, where it's primarily about the murder. This really had an extraordinary sense of humor, which I loved, and also was very emotional, and the characters felt real to me. I knew it had to be my next film. I became obsessed with the writing, and then, subsequently, read the next two books and just wanted to know as much about these characters as I could."

Still, despite that love, many of the book's more complicated threads have been elided or condensed to ensure the film could reach a more digestible running time. "We wanted to remain as faithful as we could," Columbus says*. *"[But] if we adapted the first book, it would be seven hours if we were *that *faithful."

Here are the most significant differences between the page and the screen.

Jason Ritchie isn't obviously in the evidence photo

Tom Ellis in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

In the novel, there's no question that Ron's son, Jason (Tom Ellis), a former boxer and D-list celebrity, is in the photo that is left at the site of Tony Curran's murder. The image features Tony (Geoff Bell), Jason, and Bobby Tanner (Richard E. Grant), which makes Jason an immediate suspect in the case. However, in the film, the photograph presents a bit more of a mystery, with only Jason's tattoo being visible in the mirror behind the picture's subjects.**

Bobby Tanner

**In both the book and the film, Bobby Tanner is an old business associate of Tony Curran's. However, after a job gone wrong, which led to the murder of an innocent taxi driver, Bobby disappeared. Eventually, Elizabeth tracks Bobby down, discovering that he is now living under the name Peter Ward and working peacefully as a florist. She gets useful information from him, but she remains satisfied that he's not a threat.

Helen Mirren as Elizabeth in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

The film ratchets up Bobby's menace and expands his role in the plot. Here, he's still in business with Tony as a partial owner of Cooper's Chase. However, he's eager to sell the property quickly for a large amount of money. Additionally, Bobby is part of a human trafficking scheme with Tony Curran, bringing in workers from Eastern Europe and confiscating their passports. Bobby is behind several scares every time Elizabeth gets close to uncovering the truth. He sends a creepy man to follow her and warns, "Don't wake the dead." Later, he sends an intruder to her home who leaves a bouquet of flowers with a threatening warning to back off.

After she locates him, Elizabeth blackmails him into selling Cooper's Chase to an investor of her choice to keep his name out of the case. Virtually none of this is in the book.

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Jason's arrest and love life

Pierce Brosnan, Tom Ellis, and Daniel Mays in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

In the novel, the detectives, DCI Chris Hudson (Daniel Mays) and Donna Freitas (Naomi Ackie), never have enough evidence to actually arrest Jason for the murder of Tony Curran. He asks the Thursday Murder Club for help tracking down the other men in the photograph to clear his name, but also to help reassure him that he's not the murderer's next target.

Jason begins to suspect that another local, Karen Playfair, who lives with her father, Gordon, is the one guilty of Ventham's murder. He goes on a date with her to suss her out, but she sees through him quickly. The two end up dating.

In the film, Karen and Gordon Playfair are no longer present, and Jason reveals that he was having an affair with Ventham's wife — a time-stamped photo in bed with her offers his alibi proving he did not kill Tony.

Turkish Gianni

**One of the main figures in the novel, Turkish Gianni, is completely absent from the film. On the page, Turkish Gianni is a major red herring as the other business partner of Tony Curran, Jason Ritchie, and Bobby Tanner. Jason and Bobby both believe that Gianni has found a way to return from Cyprus and is the one behind Tony's murder.

DCI Chris even goes on a trip to Cyprus to speak with Gianni's imprisoned mobster father, who insists that he hasn't seen his son in decades. However, Chris believes Gianni has been living in hiding all these years, planning revenge against Tony for stealing money from a job. No one is ever able to locate Gianni, but the police are resigned to believing that Gianni was the one who killed Tony.

Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, and Celia Imrie in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

Eliminating Turkish Gianni and shifting the role of Bobby Tanner were part of Columbus' efforts to tighten the third act. "[Author] Richard Osman would be the first to admit that the third act of the book is much more expansive," the director explains. "You go on a few detours that a film does not allow you to do. A TV series, potentially. So if T*hursday Murder Club* was separated into four separate chapters, we potentially could have examined all of those characters, but a film didn't allow me to do that. So, I had to be very precise in terms of figuring out exactly what would work for the audience."

Steve Georgiou

Steve Georgiou is another figure largely absent from the film. In the book, Steve owns a local gym. When Chris interrogates him, he heavily implies that he saw Gianni again recently — thus making Gianni an easy suspect for Tony Curran's murder and affirming the police's beliefs that Gianni is their man.

The case of Bernard

Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, and Martin Bishop in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

One of the residents of Cooper's Chase, Bernard (Martin Bishop), is another red herring in the novels. Joyce, both on page and screen, has a rather obvious crush on Bernard and regularly brings him special cakes that she makes for him. Bernard has a habit of sitting on a bench outside the cemetery that Ian Ventham (David Tennant) plans to demolish. Thus, the TMC suspects him of having a motive for killing Ventham.

It turns out that Bernard sat there because he secretly buried his wife in the cemetery with plans to relocate her ashes at a future date. However, the bench, with its cement base, was built over the burial place, making it impossible for him to move her. However, Bernard told his daughter that the ashes she brought to India were really her mother's. Guilty over the possibility that his daughter will discover his lie, Bernard kills himself so that he can finally be reunited with his wife.

Celia Imrie, who portrays Joyce, says that she still kept this notion of her character's affection for Bernard alive in her performance. "You can't jam everything in, unfortunately," she says. "But I kept it in my back pocket, and it was quite good that the first time Elizabeth meets Joyce, I am sitting with Bernard. [Martin and I] made sure whenever we could that we sat next to each other. So, we had it in our heads that was part of the story, even though there wasn't time to include it."

Peter Mercer's body

Henry Lloyd Hughes and Helen Mirren in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

Just as in the book, contractor Bogdan Jankowski (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) discovers the extra skeleton in the grave that he digs up in the cemetery. He shows it to Elizabeth before alerting the police. However, in the novel, Elizabeth keeps the discovery secret from the police for a long time, waiting for one of her contacts to trace the age and further details of the bones. She only tells the police after confirming the skeleton belongs to a male who died sometime in the 1970s.

Father Mackie's secret

Father Matthew Mackie (Joseph Marcell) still makes an appearance in the film, and he's a prominent protester in a scene where the residents of Cooper's Chase try to make a physical barrier to prevent Ventham's demolition crew from entering the cemetery. But for all intents and purposes, he's just a local priest.

Tom Ellis, Joseph Marcell, and David Tennant in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

In the novel, Father Mackie is a much more tragic figure. Elizabeth confronts him after she discovers that he was living in the area in the 1970s, putting him in proximity to the mysterious set of bones Bogdan finds hidden in the cemetery. Mackie reveals that he's not actually a priest but a doctor who served as a priest to the sisters living at the convent in the 1970s. During his time there, he fell in love with one of the nuns, Sister Margaret, whom he affectionately called Maggie. Maggie became pregnant and, after being exposed by another nun, she killed herself in the chapel. Father Mackie arranged for her and their unborn child to be buried in the cemetery, which he does not wish to be demolished. However, he is not the one responsible for Ventham's murder.

John and Penny's guilt

Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren, and Pierce Brosnan in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

Elizabeth deduces that the unidentified bones in the cemetery belong to Peter Mercer (Will Stevens), the boyfriend of the stabbing victim whose murder the TMC is investigating at the start of the story. Elizabeth is the one who realizes that Penny (Susan Kirkby) took matters into her own hands and killed Mercer before hiding his body in the cemetery. She also figures out that Penny's husband, John (Paul Freeman), as a retired veterinarian, would have had access to fentanyl, known how to use a syringe, and had a motive to cover up Mercer's murder to protect Penny.

All of this remains true in the film; however, in the book, only Elizabeth confronts Penny and John, while the other members of the TMC are present in the movie.

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David Tennant and Henry Lloyd-Hughes in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

One of the more colorful characters in the novel and the film is contractor Bogdan Jankowski. Not only is he the one to discover Peter Mercer's skeleton and show it to Elizabeth, but he forms a close friendship with Elizabeth's husband, Stephen (Jonathan Pryce), who is suffering from dementia. Bogdan and Stephen regularly play chess, and one night, while playing, Bogdan confesses to Stephen that he is responsible for Tony Curran's murder.

This, however, is where the film and the novel diverge. On the page, Bogdan only tells Stephen, who promptly forgets what he has heard. Bogdan reveals that he murdered Tony Curran as revenge for Tony's murder of his best friend, Kazimir, the taxi driver who was the only witness to a shooting involving Tony and Turkish Gianni's drug operation. Tony ordered Gianni to kill Kazimir. In revenge, Bogdan killed Gianni and, with the help of Steve Giorgiou, made it appear as if Gianni had fled the country (also pocketing the $100,000 that Gianni was holding for Tony). He was biding his time with Tony, finally getting an opening after installing a new security system at Tony's home.

In the film, Bogdan does admit to killing Tony, but he insists that it was an accident. He was merely at Tony's home trying to retrieve his passport so that he could return to Poland to visit his ailing mother. The two got into an altercation, leading to Tony's death. This all builds to a climax as Elizabeth fears that Bogdan may hurt Stephen, busting in on them, only to hear Bogdan's confession via Stephen's tape recorder. Here, Bogdan is arrested, while he remains in the clear in the book.

Fate of Cooper's Chase

On screen and page, Joyce's daughter, Joanna (Ingrid Oliver), buys Cooper's Chase via her firm, Bramley Holdings. However, in the novel, it is all orchestrated by Joanna after she reviews Ventham's legal files for her mother. She eventually surprises Joyce and the TMC with the news.

Helen Mirren and Celia Imrie in 'The Thursday Murder Club'.

Giles Keyte/Netflix

In the film, Elizabeth convinces Bobby Tanner to sell the property to Joyce, ensuring that the land will stay in the hands of someone who wants to protect their community.

Ibrahim's sexuality

**While the novel makes it clear that Joyce is a widow, Ron is an ex-husband several times over, and Elizabeth is married to Stephen, it leaves Ibrahim's sexuality and romantic past a mystery. The film briefly fills in that gap, featuring a scene in a closing montage in which Ibrahim shows Joyce a picture of himself as a young man with another guy, who appears to be his partner.**

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