‘The Thursday Murder Club’ Book vs. Movie Changes To Netflix Film

SPOILER ALERT: This piece spoils The Thursday Murder Club film now streaming on Netflix.

The film adaptation of Richard Osman’s best-selling The Thursday Murder Club has arrived on Netflix.

Directed by Chris Columbus and produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, the film takes viewers on a twisty mystery journey helmed by the titular group — comprised of Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth, Ben Kingsley’s Ibrahim, Celia Imrie’s Joyce and Pierce Brosnan’s Ron.

The four folks living in Cooper’s Chase retirement community are more than prepared when two murders take place and eliminate key figures in the management of where they live. The two targets were fighting over how to go about developing the land, which lent some tips to the investigation of their deaths, but there are also a few red herrings and coincidental events that complicate the case.

Below find five major changes made in The Thursday Murder Club film, now streaming:

Jason Gets Arrested

In the book, Ron’s son Jason Ritchie, who is played by Tom Ellis in the film, was clearly in the phot left behind at the scene of Tony Curran’s murder. In the film, he is cut out of the picture, but his arm tattoo reflects in a mirror next to the backs of Bobby Tanner (Richard E. Grant) and Tony (Geoff Bell).

Jason doesn’t get arrested in the book because PC De Freitas (Naomi Ackie in the film) and DCI Chris Hudson (Daniel Mays) don’t have enough proof to do that. He asks the Thursday Murder Club in the novel to track down the other men in the photograph to reassure him that he can’t be the murderer’s next target, and he goes on a date with Karen Playfair thinking she might be guilty of killing Tony Curran so that her father can sell his land on Cooper’s Chase property to someone else.

Karen and her father Gordon are not in the film, and Jason, after getting arrested, admits to having an affair with Ian Ventham’s (David Tennant) wife with a timestamped photo that gives him an alibi at the time of Tony’s murder.

Gianni Gunduz aka Turkish Johnny

In the novel, a big deal was made of the photographer, nicknamed Turkish Johnny, behind the photo of Jason Ritchie, Bobby Tanner and Tony Curran. He serves as a red herring in the book, as he is a business partner of Tony, Jason and Bobby. Bobby and Jason believe Gianni escaped to Cyprus after killing Tony Curran in the book.

Turkish Johnny is entirely absent from the film.

Bobby Tanner

Richard E. Grant’s Bobby Tanner is another business partern of Curran and Ritchie’s in both the book and in the film, but in the book, he is more docile. He comes across more menacing in the film after sending a man to scare Elizabeth in the graveyard by whispering “Don’t Wake the Dead” and tasking an intruder to place flowers in her home with a threatening message.

Elizabeth then goes to visit Bobby Tanner, who goes by Derek Ward in the film vs. Peter Ward to confront him about his involvement in all of this. In the film, he is the third owner of Cooper’s Chase and he is motivated to sell the property quickly for a lot of money. He also revealed that he and Tony Curran ran a human trafficking scheme that confiscated passports from Eastern European workers to ensure their labor. In the book, Elizabeth brought Joyce with her to visit Bobby, but she went alone in the film. She successfully convinced him through blackmail to sell to an investor of her choice to keep him clean of the murder case.

The TCM Necklaces

Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron each have gold medallion necklaces with TCM stamped across the front signifying their affiliation with The Thursday Murder Club. Penny (Susan Kirby) was the fourth member, but since she is incapacitated, Elizabeth sought out Joyce to be the fourth member of their club at the beginning of the film.

Following a drastic reveal that shan’t be spoiled here, Joyce gets her own TCM necklace. These aren’t referenced in the novel and make a great touch to the cozy murder mystery movie.

No Father Mackie Puzzle Piece

Osman’s book goes on a bit of a tangent with another character — Father Mackie (Joseph Marcell in the film). In the novel, Mackie has a possible motive for delaying the breaking ground of the graveyard, but his character served as another red herring. Mackie has a tragic story in the book that connects him to the graveyard, but he is not a murderer.

In the film, Father Mackie makes a brief appearance at the protest that Ron stages around the graveyard, but he doesn’t factor into the story much more than that.

Bogdan’s Involvement

Bogdan Janowski (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) discovers a second skeleton in a grave in both the book and the film, which prompts the third peripheral mystery aside from the two murders in the story. He was Tony Curran’s handyman, and both in the novel and movie, he confesses to Elizabeth’s wife Stephen (Jonathan Pryce) that he killed Tony. Stephen, who has dementia, forgets this information shortly in the book, but in the film he captures it on a recorder he keeps each day for his own memory.

In the book, Bogdan took revenge on both Gianni and Tony because they arranged the murder of his best friend Kazimir, the taxi driver who witnessed a shooting involving the drug operation that Gianni and Tony ran. Bogdan killed Gianni in the book and then installed a faulty security system for Tony Curran to get his opening to take him out too.

In the film, Bogdan swears that his killing Tony was an accident. He was in Tony’s home trying to get ahold of his passport that Tony had confiscated — as mentioned by Bobby Tanner previously. He wanted to go visit his ailing mother in Poland, but this led to an altercation and Tony’s death.

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