Netflix has now brought one of the most significant publishing phenomena of recent years to our living rooms with its adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club. Anchored by stars including Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan, the cosy crime thriller has jumped from the pages of Richard Osman‘s novels into the movie world. Unsurprisingly, the film currently sits atop the list of most-watched movies on Netflix in the UK.
Making more of these films seems like a no-brainer — and there are three further Osman books, with a fifth story arriving this month — but there’s already a problem. One of the changes made in the process of adapting The Thursday Murder Club for the screen could be a sticking point in future films, marking as it does a major change for a significant character.
Note: There are spoilers for The Thursday Murder Club ahead and minor spoilers for subsequent books.
One of the key changes from the Thursday Murder Club book to the movie version is the fate of Bogdan — the Polish handyman played by Henry Lloyd-Hughes. In the film, he is taken away by police after confessing to the murder of Coopers Chase co-owner Tony Curran as a result of a dispute over his passport, which Tony had been holding on to. Bogdan explains the situation as an accident, in which it was “him or me”.
Henry Lloyd-Hughes plays Bogdan, whose fate in The Thursday Murder Club movie is very different to the book. (Netflix)
However, in the book, Bogdan’s motive for killing Tony is far more complicated. Decades before the events of the film, Tony ordered the murder of Bogdan’s friend Kaz, who had witnessed Tony shooting someone in a pub. Bogdan killed the hitman, Turkish Gianni, and began to plan Tony’s death as well, waiting for the right time.
Bogdan’s opportunity came about when he was hired to fit the security system at Tony’s house, which he tampered with to ensure that it could not detect the murder. This defective security system does feature in the movie, but Bogdan’s role in damaging it is never explained and it lingers as a loose thread.
Read more: Thursday Murder Club’s Chris Columbus praises Netflix over all-star cast (Yahoo Entertainment, 5 min read)
Just as in the movie, it’s Elizabeth’s husband Stephen who works out what Bogdan did, but the film adds a bizarre race against time sequence in which Elizabeth suspects Bogdan of poisoning Stephen. This is at odds with the close bond between Elizabeth and Bogdan, established earlier in the story. If she’s willing to meet with him alone in a graveyard at night, she probably can’t imagine him murdering her husband.
Bogdan and Elizabeth’s friendship is a key part of future Thursday Murder Club stories. (Netflix)
But this is where the issue with the sequel comes in. In the book, Stephen is the only character who is definitively aware that Bogdan killed Tony, though both assume that Elizabeth has figured it out too. Bogdan becomes an ally of the club in subsequent books and eventually begins a relationship with the police officer Donna — played in the movie by Naomi Ackie. None of this is possible if Bogdan is in prison after confessing on tape to murder, and then repeating that confession in front of several police officers.
In the very likely event that Netflix moves forward with a sequel to The Thursday Murder Club, they’ll have to find a way to fudge Bogdan’s story and spring him from prison. Alternatively, they will have to provide Bogdan’s story threads to a different character entirely, which would be a shame given how likeable he is on the page. His presence allows our four elderly leads a way into the criminal underworld, as well as a bit of muscle when they need it.
Read more: Pierce Brosnan Had The Same Thought As Everyone Else When He Was Cast In The Thursday Murder Club (HuffPost, 2 min read)
This story shift is an interesting contradiction as the change to Bogdan’s motive arguably makes him a more sympathetic character — a desperate man fighting for his life rather than someone carrying out a premeditated murder. And yet, he faces justice on the screen in a way he never does on the page. The books’ version of Elizabeth has enough moral grey in her to allow Bogdan to get away with murder, given the victim was a vicious, violent man who had personally wronged her friend.
It will be fascinating to see how a Thursday Murder Club sequel addresses this Bogdan-shaped problem it has created for itself. And that sequel will almost certainly happen. Mirren told Radio Times she’d do it “in a nanosecond” and director Columbus let slip to Film Stories that “all signs seem to point in that direction that we will be shooting a sequel or the next chapter”.
When that sequel does come about, it will almost certainly have to be without Bogdan. That’s bad news for fans of the character on the page and, let’s face it, bad for the love life of a certain PC Donna De Freitas.
The Thursday Murder Club is streaming now on Netflix UK.
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