The Thursday Murder Club is stumped. 

The film adaptation of Richard Osman’s bestselling novel opens on a cold case from the 1970s: A woman named Angela Hughes fell out of a second-floor window with a knife piercing her white nightgown. The autopsy revealed that the stab wound was what killed her, but something doesn’t add up: The man who found her body seconds after her fall could have prevented her from bleeding out. The story “stinks like a rat up a drain pipe,” according to Pierce Brosnan’s character, Ron, one of the titular group of friends living at the picturesque Coopers Chase retirement home who solves murders for fun. 

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This isn’t the only mystifying case the Thursday Murder Club contends with over the course of the film, which is directed by Chris Columbus (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone). While most people think of retirement communities as placid destinations full of painting classes, tea, and quiet walks in the garden, Ron, Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), and Joyce (Celia Imrie) are up to their ears in grisly crimes.

When the killings start happening closer to home, the Thursday Murder Club take matters into their own hands. In the throes of a nasty divorce and desperate to make money, Coopers Chase co-owner Ian Ventham (David Tennant) announces his plans to sell the property to a developer despite the residents’ protests. Thankfully, co-owner Tony Curran (Geoff Ball) will do everything in his power to prevent this from happening — that is, until he’s beaten to death in his own home.

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When, only days later, Ian also suddenly collapses during a protest against the impending development, the Thursday Murder Club realizes something much bigger and more insidious is going on that might involve Ron’s celebrity boxer son Jason (Tom Ellis), infamous criminal Bobby Tanner (Richard E. Grant) — and maybe even Thursday Murder Club alumna, Detective Inspector Penny Gray (Susan Kirkby).

If your head was spinning by the end of The Thursday Murder Club, keep reading to find out the fate of Coopers Chase and those in its orbit.

Who is Penny Gray?

Penny was a trailblazing local police officer who got her start in the 1970s as the only woman on the force. She was also a close friend of Elizabeth’s and a member of the TMC before she suffered a stroke and went into hospice. No longer able to speak, she is tended to day and night by her loyal husband, John (Paul Freeman), a former veterinarian. “The painful thing as you get older is that you lose people,” says Mirren. “Seeing her dear friend who was so alert, smart, active, passionate, and now has been wiped out by a stroke” is difficult to process. 

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Who is Bobby Tanner?

Thanks to some distinctive flower bouquets, the Thursday Murder Club eventually tracks down Bobby, known for a list of crimes as long as your arm and long presumed dead. With help from Constable Donna de Freitas (Naomi Ackie), the foursome discovers Bobby is the mysterious third owner of Coopers Chase. In a gripping showdown at his flower shop, Thorny Blooms, Elizabeth gets Bobby to admit he and the other Coopers Chase owners brought workers into the country illegally and took their passports against their will. 

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So who killed Tony Curran?

Coopers Chase’s groundskeeper, Bogdan (Henry Lloyd Hughes), is playing his regular chess game with Elizabeth’s husband, Stephen (Jonathan Pryce), who is slowly losing his memory because of dementia. Assuming that Stephen will soon forget this information, Bogdan admits that he accidentally killed Tony in self-defense when he demanded his passport back so he could visit his sick mother in Poland. When Elizabeth arrives, she reveals that Stephen records all of their chess matches to improve his game, and Bodgan is taken into police custody thanks to the murder confession they now have on tape.

“The murder mystery is the foundation, but it’s not the essence,” explains Mirren. “The essence is these characters and their humanity. It’s comedic, but it has these serious issues within it as well, the issues that you have to deal with the further you get into your life — the diminishing of your mind and your body, and how to deal with that.” 

What happened to Angela Hughes? What does it have to do with Ian Ventham?

The woman in white was a perfect case for the Thursday Murder Club, so why didn’t Penny suggest it during her tenure, before going to hospice? Soon after Bogdan confesses, Elizabeth realizes why. As suspected, Angela was killed by her boyfriend, Peter Mercer. The boys-club police force let Peter off, but Penny sought her own justice and buried his body in the Coopers Chase cemetery. And she never would have been found out if Bogdan hadn’t dug up Peter’s bones — per Ian’s orders to begin developing the property. 

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To prevent Ian from going to the police with the discovered remains and thereby exposing Penny’s secret, John killed Ian with a lethal injection of fentanyl. With his wife in her final days, John acted out of desperation, a final gesture to protect his beloved whose deterioration was otherwise out of his control.

“Elizabeth lives in that world. Her profession was a morally ambiguous profession,” says Mirren. “So from her perspective, justice was done.”

Do Penny and John get arrested?

After Elizabeth confronts John, he asks for a moment alone with Penny. With a knowing look, Elizabeth bids both friends farewell, knowing John plans to inject both Penny and himself with fentanyl to avoid getting arrested. “[Writer Kate Bard] managed to put in those wonderful moral ambiguities, the emotion of what happens with Penny and Bogdan,” says Columbus of the ending. “The movie does take a slightly dark turn at the end, but that is also what gives it emotional complexity.”

“What the ending does is it reminds you of the chapter they are in,” adds The Thursday Murder Club producer Jennifer Todd. “Elizabeth’s got a husband who’s struggling with memory and a best friend adventurer pal for her whole life who’s now basically in a coma. Even though Elizabeth’s off solving crime and having fun, that’s why she’s here, and it reminds you of the gravitas and the hard part of being in this chapter of your life.”

At their funeral, Ibrahim delivers a beautiful eulogy, and Joyce inherits Penny’s “TMC” necklace, granting her official membership to the club under the promise that she “ABC,” as Ron mandates: Always bring cake.

So what happens to Coopers Chase?

In exchange for Elizabeth not ratting him out to the police, Bobby sells Coopers Chase to a bidder of her choosing: Joyce’s financier daughter, Joanna, played by Ingrid Oliver, who is married to author Osman in real life. The film’s final moments find Elizabeth and Stephen celebrating their anniversary with a romantic dinner and dancing, Ron and Jason (who cleared his name for Tony’s murder by admitting he was having an affair with Ian’s wife) cheers-ing while watching a football match, and Joyce and Ibrahim exchanging memories and looking at photo albums. 

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“To me, whodunits are never about what happens, they’re about why do I care what happens?” says Osman. “I try and write people as real, and when you do that, you can’t have an open and shut, black and white, this person’s evil and this person’s good, good has prevailed story. It just wouldn’t be fun to write or read.”

Knowing this lot, this moment of relaxation won’t last forever, and they’ll be back on a new case in no time.

Speaking of Coopers Chase, where was The Thursday Murder Club filmed? 

The Thursday Murder Club was filmed at the Elizabethan country manor Englefield House in Berkshire, England, which was also used as a filming location in The Crown. The book describes the stately residence as being adjacent to a church with a cemetery, something crucial to the story. “Almost magically, on the second day of location scouting we found Englefield House in Berkshire, a visually stunning manor where the church and cemetery were actually located below the house,” says Columbus.  The imposing estate was perfect to bring the “vibrant and alive” Coopers Chase to life. 

The Thursday Murder Club is now streaming on Netflix.

American Director Chris Columbus’ Take on Britain’s The Thursday Murder Club