“ The Thursday Murder Club ” is a film of simple pleasures. Set at a community for retirees, the film stars Helen Mirren , Pierce Brosnan , Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie as members of its titular group. Every week these retirees solve cold cases in the jigsaw room of the vast countryside estate that makes up their retirement home. It’s a way to pass the time and get a much welcome thrill amid their otherwise quite quaint lives. Which, as it happens, is also a good way to describe what Chris Columbus ’s adaptation of Richard Osman’s bestselling novel of the same name may offer its Netflix audience: as contemporary whodunits go, this is as amiable and inoffensive as they come.

Just as its title values blunt simplicity, Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote’s screenplay sets up the film’s

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