RICHARD OSMAN: The Man Who Died Twice

Green with envy at Richard Osman’s runaway success, I was determined not to like The Man Who Died Twice, but I was quickly won over by his style, which is as light and likeable as his appearances on Pointless and other television shows. I didn’t read The Thursday Murder Club but I enjoyed the movie, which had much of the geniality and whimsicality of the Peter Ustinov Agatha Christie movies.

Elizabeth, the Helen Mirren character, is again at the heart of the story. Decades ago, early in her Secret Service career, she helped to fake the death of a man she later married. Now her ex-husband reappears, on the run with twenty million pounds worth of a mobster’s diamonds. When he turns up dead again, she and her three chums from the retirement home aren’t sure whether he’s actually been murdered or faked another death in order to start a third new life.

Getting involved with drug-dealing gangsters is dangerous territory for Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron. One of them is badly beaten, and they all have a few close calls.

To fully enjoy this story, you have to take the four pensioners to heart, and whilst I did initially warm to them, 420 pages of their biting banter wore me down. I never went off Peter Ustinov’s Poirot, but I did find David Suchet’s wearisome. Joan Hickson’s Marple never lost her charm, whereas Geraldine McEwan’s and Julia McKenzie’s I never took to, much as I adored both actresses in other roles they played. Of the four leads in The Thursday Murder Club movie, Celia Imrie’s Joyce was the one I liked most, although on the page in The Man Who Died Twice she got on my nerves quicker than any of the others; Ron (Pierce Brosnan) is the only one I didn’t find a pain in the bum after a few hundred pages. And I totally lost interest in whodunit.

Clearly the nation (the nations, plural) have taken this series to their heart. I, clearly, have not, but I sincerely congratulate Mr Osman on coming up with a winning formula. I’m unlikely to read him again, but I’ll almost certainly watch all the movies.