All the Thursday Murder Club Cast Members Announced So Far

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Last Updated on July 9, 2024 by Stefanie Hutson

A year or two back, there were some articles going around that cited interviews with Richard Osman talking about how the dream cast members Thursday Murder Club fans had suggested probably wouldn't happen when the series was adapted for screen – mainly because many of the suggested actors were a bit too old to count on for many years of filming.

Since then, however, several casting announcements have been made, and some fan favourites have signed on to the upcoming Netflix production. In case you've missed any of the announcements, we've gathered up all the details here – along with recommendations on where you can watch each of the actors, just in case you're not familiar with their work.

Upcoming Thursday Murder Club MAin Cast Members

If you've been paying attention to discussions about who should play Thursday Murder Club characters, you'll know Dame Helen Mirren has been the single most popular choice for the role of Elizabeth Best. The character almost feels like it was written for her. She has a tough, smart, self-assured look that makes you absolutely believe she could have been a spy at some point in her life.

Above, we show Mirren in one of her most iconic roles, that of DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect. The series ran from 1991 to 2006, and if you haven't seen it, it's one of those classic shows that every British TV fan should check out at some point. In the US, it was most recently spotted on Tubi, Roku Channel, and BritBox (though you can pay to rent or buy it on services like Google Play and Prime Video).

Sir Ben Kingsley will take on the role of ex-psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif, and while it's not a name we saw a lot of people throwing around, we think it's a great choice. There's a vulnerability about Ibrahim that we think he'll be marvelous at conveying.

Most people reading this site will have seen Kingsley in Schindler's List or Gandhi, so we'll instead highlight his performance in Stonehearst Asylum, a 2014 film loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether”. Why this one? Well, it's mainly because this one also shows him playing a mental health professional – albeit a very different kind. The film follows a young Oxford graduate who takes a job in a mental asylum, only to learn the treatments hailed as revolutionary are actually quite awful. Along with Sir Ben, the film also stars Kate Beckinsale, Michael Caine, Jim Sturgess, David Thewlis, and his own son, Edmund Kingsley.

In the US, Stonehearst Asylum was last spotted on Peacock, Freevee, Roku Channel, and Amazon Prime.

Pierce Brosnan in The Out-Laws | Netflix

Pierce Brosnan is one of the last actors many of us expected to see in Thursday Murder Club, and the role he'll be filling makes it all the more surprising. That's because Brosnan will be filling the shoes of former union leader Ron Ritchie.

Don't get us wrong, though. Just because many of us were surprised to see him cast in the role, that doesn't mean we have any doubts about his ability to pull it off. If you need something to help you get the suave James Bond Pierce Brosnan out of your mind ahead of time, check him out in The Out-Laws on Netflix. The film follows a straight-laced bank employee who's about to get married – but when his branch is held up by famous bank robbers just ahead of his wedding, he starts to think it might have been his future in-laws (one of whom is Brosnan in the role of Billy McDermott).

Joyce Meadowcroft was the last of the core Thursday Murder Club members to be announced, and it's another role for which many readers had some very strong opinions. Dame Penelope Wilton was the name we saw thrown around most often, but the producers made an equally brilliant choice in casting Celia Imrie.

Interestingly, this won't be the first time Imrie and Mirren have appeared on screen together. A little more than twenty years ago, both appeared in the hit film Calendar Girls, which told the story of a group of Yorkshire women who raised money for cancer research by producing a nude calendar. And let's face it, that DOES sound like something Joyce would come up with – though she'd probably want the men to do the modeling. Though the film wasn't free with any major streaming subscriptions last time we checked, it WAS available to rent through most the major platforms (Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Apple TV, etc).

PC Donna de Freitas is not a resident of Coopers Chase and she's not a member of the Thursday Murder Club, but she's central to the story and a lot of people were curious about who might take on the role. Actress Naomi Ackie has been chosen, and if you're not familiar with her work, a great place to start is Small Axe over on Amazon Prime. The collection of films tells stories from London's West Indian community, ranging from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. She appears in the episode titled “Education”.

Jonathan Pryce has been cast to play Stephen Best. Personally, we hadn't given much thought to who would play the role of the thoughtful, chess-loving, and dementia-stricken husband to Elizabeth, but as with so many of the others, it's another great choice.

Pryce has had a long career full of interesting roles, but we've chosen to highlight Slow Horses here because it's another role that sees him playing a vulnerable but still clever older man. The spy thriller is based on Mick Herron's Slough House novels, and it follows a group of intelligence agents who've been banished to a dead end office after each committing some kind of monumental screw-up. You can watch it on Apple TV – and if you haven't checked it out already, we strongly recommend you do. It's easily one of the best British TV shows of the last 10 years.

Other Thursday Murder Club Cast Members

At time of writing, the characters above are the only ones who've been announced in conjunction with a specific actor – but a number of other actors have been announced. They are:

Richard E. Grant (Gosford Park)
Tom Ellis (Lucifer, Miranda)
Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Indian Summers)
David Tennant (Doctor Who)
Daniel Mays (Temple)
Geoff Bell (Absentia)
Paul Freeman (Absentia)
Ingrid Oliver (Defending the Guilty)
Sarah Niles (Ted Lasso)

For now, it's anyone's guess which roles each of the above actors will be filling. Some of the other major roles not yet publicly linked up with an actor include:

Ian Ventham, owner of Cooper's Chase
Tony Curran, Ian's builder
Bogan Jankowski (and we're VERY eager to see who gets this one)
Penny and John Gray, close friends of Elizabeth
DCI Chris Hudson, Donna's boss
Jason Ritchie, son of Ron
Joyce's daughter Joanna
Joyce's friend Bernard Cottle

Of course, there are many other characters in the books – but these are some of the major ones that come to mind for the first novel. It's possible some roles and sub-plots might be eliminated or consolidated for the purposes of a movie, though.

We'll continue to update this post as more announcements are made. It's currently in production and they're dripping little bits of information at a time – so it surely won't be long before we hear more. In the meantime, you may find these useful: