The Thursday Club Murders : Joyce’s Coffee and Walnut Cake Recipe 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁
/Year Released: 2025
Directed by: Chris Columbus
Starring: Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingley, Naomi Ackie
(Pg-13, 124 min.)
Genre: Mystery and Suspense with Comic Overtones
Move over Agatha Christie and Miss Marple. *(See except at end of the review). Your Tuesday Club Murders has moved 2 days and about 93 years to become The Thursday Club Murders. And instead of just one elderly spinster, Miss Marple, solving the crimes that perplexed all the professionals around her, we have 4 and then 5 collaborating on past cold cases.
Until a real live one – well not really alive, but a fresh corpse, turns up and new resident and retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft (Celia Imrie) cannot hide the thrill, her “sorry for your loss” demoted to a three-letter acronym.
"Now We've Got A Real Case To Solve. Isn't It Wonderful? Obviously RIP And All That."
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A group of senior sleuths passionate about solving cold cases get plunged into a real-life murder mystery in this comic caper based on the novel.
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Here are our sleuths:
Helen Mirren as Elizabeth, the “de facto” leader of the group, is somewhat cagey about her past.
“Let’s just say I have a wide portfolio of skills,” she says, creating a era of mystery around herself as well as the mysteries the club focuses upon. (Her cinematic past also shows a quite a wide variety of skills as well.)
Pierce Brosnan as Ron, a retired union worker adept at rabble rousing. He’s also the cynical one. (To Different Drummer he is forever young, though, the mysterious Remingon Steele from 1987, even though he has graced us with his acting skills playing villain and hero alike since that television debut.
No matter what part he plays, Brosnan always has an air of cynicism, even if it is to disguise an inner vulnerability.
In today’s features, the cynicism is still there. “It always comes down to money at the end,” he remarks to his fellow senior sleuths.
Celia Imrie as Joyce, a retired nurse and newcomer to” the luxurious Coopers Chase retirement home” where all our main characters live, pepping up their rather dull lives solving cold-case murders for fun.
In addition to her unbridled enthusiasm mentioned earlier, Joyce’s medical knowledge makes her a worthy addition to the group.
Ben Kingley as Ibrahim, a former psychiatrist, who helps the group solve the new and certainly not cold case. Let’s hope he is not the icily polite psychiatrist who ran Shutter Island.
Naomi Ackie as Donna De Freitas, a skilled detective who finagles her way into the case, being bored herself as the put upon Police Constable reduced to bringing her superiors their tea.
Naomi becomes an off the record member of the Thursday Murder Club.
All of our characters splice the mystery with comedy, a rich part of current cinema. Their throw away comments, such as “I’d welcome a burglar. Be nice to have a visitor,” or their hopping into a real and risky murder investigation show that loneliness is part of retirement living, even as our sleuths manage to joke about it.
Like so many great stories and mysteries the complex plots are not really what we care about. It’s the people; these guys and gals are our focus. And sometimes even their children, such as Ron’s son who is a former world champion boxer now reduced to a reality TV personality.
Another is the semi estranged daughter of Joyce, who in the end proves quite valuable.
Or a long presumed dead thug with “a list of crimes as long as your arm,” the owner of a flower shop as well as a mysterious owner of the luxurious retirement home where all the senior sleuths live.
Of course, we have the usual complaints about adapting a book to the screen. True, almost uniformly, books are better than the films they turn into.
Not having read the books on which the film is based, I can only let you know that many felt disappointed in this rendition, calling it “dumbed down with flat characters” or “a pretty surface level adaptation of the book” that “gets none of the subtext.”
Different Drummers says ignore this caterwauling and just enjoy this whimsical Whodunnit where the cast seems to be having as much fun as the characters.
Not to miss, especially for fun loving seniors. Different Drummer is certainly one of them!
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*In addition to Agatha Christie we have Isaac Asimov’s Black Widower’s Club which follows Christie’s pattern, where a group of friends meet regularly for dinners, serving up tales of crime with their capons.
The supper party is replete with pompous writers, stuffy experts, and enough vanity and ego to fill Yankee Stadium. However, just as the meek and flustered Miss Marple consistently outwits all others in her shrewd apprehension of the small but significant detail, so Asimov’s unobtrusive and thoroughly deferential waiter Henry regularly delivers the coup de grace.
Excerpt above is from Different Drummer’s own Appetite for Murder: a Mystery: A Mystery Lover’s Cookbbook. This chapter gives us recipes for
Iridescent Turtle Soup with Sherry on the Side (“No Smoking”), Veal Marengo in an Orange-Brandy Sauce, (“Quicker than the Eye”), and Black Forest Torte Besotted with Kirsch (“Earthset and Evening Star”)
–Kathy Borich
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Trailer
Film-Loving Foodie
Joyce Meadowcroft, the newcomer to the group is a retired nurse and her medical knowledge adds a new dimension to the senior sleuths. But maybe even more helpful are her cakes. They provide comfort, a chance for comradery, and even help lure in reluctant witnesses and suspects as well.
One great British chef observes that the French certainly own the pastry field, but the British excel in their cakes. Joyce’s Coffee and Walnut Cake is my favorite, and not terribly hard to make, either.
Feast on this lovely cake while you feast on this delicious film.
Joyce’s Coffee and Walnut Cake
Ingredients for Cake
· 8 oz of unsalted butter, softened
· 8 oz of caster sugar
· 4 range free eggs, large and beaten
· 1 tbsp of instant coffee granules mixed with 1 tbsp of boiling water
· 8 oz of self-raising flour
· 2 2/3 oz of chopped walnuts
Ingredients for Butter Cream Icing
· 6 1/4 oz of butter, softened
· 10 2/3 oz of icing sugar
· 3 tbsp of instant coffee granules, mixed with 1 tbsp of boiling water into a paste
· 1 3/4 oz of chopped walnuts
· 12 walnut halves
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and line 2 x 8 inch (20cm) sandwich tins with baking paper,
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy – I use a hand-held whisk for this.
Add the beaten eggs, a little at a time, with a tablespoon of flour to stop it curdling, and beat well between each addition of egg and flour.
Add any remaining flour along with the coffee and walnuts and mix well.
Divide the cake mixture between the two sandwich tins and bake for 20–25 minutes, or until well risen and a dark golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 2 minutes before turning the cakes out onto a wire rack.
Whilst the cakes are cooling, make the coffee buttercream. Beat the butter together with the icing sugar until pale and fluffy, then add the coffee and chopped walnuts. Mix well again and allow to firm up in the fridge for 15–20 minutes.
When the cakes are completely cold, sandwich them together with half of the coffee buttercream. Spread the rest of the buttercream over the top of the cake and decorate with the walnut halves
