Column | A vintage private eye

In an early scene from The Thursday Murder Club, directed by veteran director Chris Columbus (Home Alone, The Goonies), retired spy Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) shows the local police inspector Hudson (Daniel Mays) a piece of evidence on her phone. Squinting hard in order to read on her archaic phone, Hudson quips, “What am I looking at? A really, really old phone?”, prompting Elizabeth to fire back, “It may be old but it still works.” Dispensing with the subtext is a hallmark of recent Netflix productions which are seldom concerned with subtlety. But one is inclined to forgive The Thursday Murder Club these little moments of laziness for its delightful cast and concept.

Based on Richard Osman’s bestselling eponymous novel series, The Thursday Murder Club follows a group of senior citizen friends who live at the Cooper’s Chase retirement home in Kent — and solve cold cases together for fun. The central investigative trio is the whip-smart ex-spy Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), pugnacious ex-trade unionist Ron (Pierce Brosnan) and methodical retired psychiatrist Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), with former nurse Joyce (Celia Imrie) being the Everyman audience-proxy introduced to the trio at the beginning of the film. This frequently amusing ‘cosy crime’ caper also utilises a rapidly growing trend in films, TV and literature in recent years — the elderly sleuth.

What they lack in terms of youthful vigour, they more than make up for in wit, wisdom and resourcefulness. These help them operate in a world where the elderly are rendered invisible. The central conflict in The Thursday Murder Club involves shady realtors trying to bulldoze Cooper’s Chase to build luxury flats on the land. Joyce’s daughter, a hedge-fund manager, seldom has the time to call her widowed mother. She feels Elizabeth and Co. is bad news for her mother Joyce, who should rather occupy herself with more age-appropriate activities.

Several recent films and TV shows have picked up on similar themes. BBC’s Death Valley (2025) is among the more enjoyable ones, starring Timothy Spall as John Chapel, an eccentric retired actor and star of the (fictional) detective show Caesar. Post-retirement, Chapel teams up with socially awkward cop Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth) to solve local murders in rural Wales. What sets this show apart from its subgenre is the deliciously dark and morbid sense of humour on display. “I shouldn’t cry, just got my lids done,” says the vainglorious wife of the deceased in the first episode. Or when Chapel sums up his partnership with Mallowan with the one-liner “I’m the inspiration, you’re the perspiration,” prompting her to reply “Did you just call me sweat?”

Kathy Bates, 77, an American national treasure, currently stars in the legal-procedural drama Matlock on CBS. The titular character is a retired septuagenarian who joins a high-powered law firm because she’s raising her recently orphaned grandson. Secretly, she is plotting to take the law firm down from the inside because of their role in representing the pharma giants responsible for her daughter’s death. Matlock presents an American spin on much the same senior-citizen issues raised by The Thursday Murder Club — only worse and much more brutal, because it’s America. In more than one episode, we see how so many American retirees struggle to pay their medical bills, locked in a never-ending bureaucratic battle with hospitals and insurers. “You saw me dear, you just didn’t notice me,” Matlock says to a colleague, explaining how and why she gets into spaces where other lawyers don’t. The elderly are underestimated to an even degree than children are.

Arguably the most popular example of this phenomenon, however, is the Hulu detective comedy series Only Murders in the Building, the fifth season of which, with Dianne Wiest and Meryl Streep as supporting characters, streams from September 9. The show, both a tribute to and a parody of true crime podcasts, stars comedy legends Steve Martin and Martin Short alongside Selena Gomez. The unlikely trio of friends share an apartment building and a remarkable chemistry while co-investigating a murder. Gomez has never looked as comfortable on screen as she does with the two Martins. The former Disney child actor grows in stature with every scene, episode and season.

The elder sleuth represents a visual and narrative break from the super-intense, high-octane world of the whodunit. Where the youthful detective runs towards firefights, the elder sleuth takes a step back, considers the larger picture and comes up with an asymmetric solution. With more and more viewers jumping aboard the ‘cosy crime’ train in the recent years, expect more elder superstars playing detectives pretty soon.

The writer and journalist is working on his first book of non-fiction.