Richard Osman. You know him. That tall fella off the telly, always the clever one on the panel shows, the quiz master with the easy charm and the slightly weary ‘isn’t-everyone-silly’ smile. Made his name with Pointless, that game where posh folk feel clever knowing obscure facts. Now he’s turned his hand to crime fiction with The Thursday Murder Club series – and it shows. Oh, it shows. It’s like his entire media persona bled onto the page: that specific blend of metropolitan smugness, middle-class comfort, and a worldview where every problem, even murder, can be solved with wit, good intentions, and a well-placed contact.
The setup sounds alright on paper: four residents of the upscale Cooper’s Chase retirement village in Kent join forces to solve unsolved murders. Joyce, once a dedicated nurse, now channels her curiosity and keen observations into diary entries that punctuate the story; Ibrahim, a retired psychiatrist, brings a logical and methodical calm to each mystery; Ron, the brash former union firebrand, provides a scrappy determination; and Elizabeth—mysterious and well-connected—hints at a challenging, perhaps clandestine, career before settling into retirement. Together, they stumble upon unsolved murders and decide to have a crack at them.
Dive into the first book, and Joyce’s diary schtick wears thin faster than cheap socks. What starts as daft charm curdles into this performative, saccharine idea of ‘quaint old lady’. Her bafflement feels staged, her perceptiveness unearned – less a real woman, more Osman’s patronising sketch of what ‘lovable’ looks like, all teacups and mild surprise masking improbable insight. It’s condescending, wrapped in whimsy.
Then there’s Ron. Supposedly the ‘Northern’ voice, the blunt old radical. Except there’s no grit there. No real anger, no ingrained, lived cynicism. It’s a costume. A bit of ‘rough’ texture for the mainly Southern, mainly comfortable readers, delivered with all the authentic menace of a slightly grumpy vicar. His firebrand past is just backstory wallpaper, never informing a genuinely challenging or uncomfortable perspective. He’s safe.
But Elizabeth… Elizabeth’s the poster child for the Osman worldview. She’s not just sharp; she’s ludicrously, implausibly connected. Ex-spooks, high-ranking coppers, influential figures – they all just happen to be in her orbit, ready to bend rules or spill secrets because… well, because she’s Elizabeth. Because she’s important. It’s not earned through the plot; it’s authorial wish-fulfilment. She’s the ultimate metropolitan insider fantasy: effortlessly influential, charming obstacles away, operating with a serene confidence that only comes from knowing the system is fundamentally designed for people like you. Her solutions often hinge on these ridiculous connections or access, stretching credibility beyond breaking point. It feels less like clever deduction and more like privilege in action.
Give the second book, The Man Who Died Twice, a go, thinking maybe it finds its rhythm. Fat chance. It doubles down on the implausibility. More shadowy figures from Elizabeth’s past, more world-weary wisdom that rings hollow because it lacks any lived weight. New characters slot into the same mould: eccentric, sure, but fundamentally decent and reasonable underneath. Even the bloody villains get tragic backstories or redeeming quirks, excusing the inexcusable. Where’s the darkness? The genuine desperation or greed that fuels real crime? Smoothed over. Polished into another harmless quirk for the Club to solve.
By The Bullet That Missed (book three), the formula’s concrete. The ‘Murder Club’ feels less like retirees and more like a smug, private consultancy for Managing Local Nuisances With Cleverness And A Nice Biscuit Selection. The actual murders? Often feel secondary to the witty banter (landing with the spontaneity of a rehearsed monologue) and the gentle, unchallenging reflections on ageing. The stakes vanish because you know Osman’s worldview won’t permit genuine ugliness, lasting consequences, or anything that might truly unsettle his characters (or his readers). It’s all meticulously managed. Controlled. Sanitised. Like the whole privileged world of Cooper’s Chase is vacuum-sealed in cashmere, keeping the messy, inconvenient realities of life – and death – firmly outside the gates.
And that’s the rub, isn’t it? That sanitisation. It’s not just about the plotting or the characters feeling a bit plastic. It’s the whole worldview Osman pumps into these books like cheap air freshener in a fancy car. That pervasive, cloying, metropolitan BBC liberalness that coats everything. It’s not presented as a perspective, mind you. Oh no. It’s presented as just how decent, reasonable people think. The default setting. And if you don’t vibe with it? Well, you’re probably not trying hard enough to be nice.
Take the way it handles anything vaguely rough or real. Poverty? Desperation? The kind of grinding hardship that might actually drive someone to do something stupid or brutal? Nah. Barely gets a look in. Or if it does, it’s swiftly wrapped in a tragic backstory and a cup of sympathy, another puzzle for the Club to ‘solve’ with their unique blend of wit, contacts, and unshakeable moral certainty. It’s poverty tourism for the comfortable. The villains aren’t terrifying embodiments of greed or malice; they’re usually just misunderstood, victims of circumstance easily corrected by a bit of Club-sponsored therapy and social engineering. It removes any genuine threat, any sense that the world contains forces that can’t be charmed or reasoned away over a Victoria sponge. It’s crime without consequence, evil without edge. Safe.
And that brings us to the tone. The sheer, unrelenting pleased-with-itself-ness of the whole enterprise. That Osman trademark. It’s in every arch observation, every neatly landed quip, every moment of poignant reflection that feels focus-grouped for maximum, inoffensive ‘depth’. There’s no rawness, no genuine surprise, no sense that the characters or the author are ever truly out of their depth or challenged by the darkness they supposedly investigate. It’s all managed. Controlled. Like watching someone solve a Rubik’s cube blindfolded while assuring you how difficult it really is. The constant wit isn’t sharp; it’s a defensive mechanism, a way of keeping the truly grim, the genuinely uncomfortable, the chaotic, firmly at bay. It’s the literary equivalent of nervously laughing in a tense situation. It grates because it feels like a refusal to engage with anything that might genuinely unsettle the reader, or the author’s own sensibilities.
Ultimately, that’s why it feels like such a wet blanket. It’s reassurance fiction. Reassurance for a certain audience that the world is fundamentally kind, that cleverness and decency (their kind of decency) always win, that influence is just a phone call away if you move in the right circles, and that even murder is just a slightly naughty disruption in a fundamentally orderly, benevolent universe run by people who think like them. It’s a comfort read for the already comfortable, written by one of their own. It wraps you in that metaphorical cashmere, whispers platitudes about kindness, and pats itself on the back for being so terribly clever and terribly nice while solving crimes with the emotional stakes of a mislaid library book. For those of us who live where the grit is real, the struggles aren’t solved by a witty put-down, and the system doesn’t give a toss who your mates are, it doesn’t feel charming. It feels insulting. It feels like a fantasy designed to flatter, not reflect. And that, more than any slow plot or daft character, is why the whole series leaves me utterly, utterly cold. Like a cup of tea left out too long at one of Joyce’s bloody meetings. All the warmth’s gone, leaving nothing but weak brew and a faint air of smug liberal self-satisfaction.
