Daniel Mays

The Thursday Murder Club

01/09/25

Netflix

Oh dear. The first film of the month and it’s a stinker. I haven’t read Richard Osman’s best-selling novel (cosy crime isn’t really my thing) but I’m sure it deserves a better adaptation than this. His podcasts (which I do listen to) show him to be clever and erudite. This movie is neither.

All the right pieces are in play: popular source material, a stellar cast, the prettiest of English villages. There’s even cake – but sadly not enough to sweeten this twaddle.

The Thursday Murder Club comprises four wealthy pensioners: Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), Ron (Pierce Brosnan) and Joyce (Celia Imrie). They live in a stately home called Coopers Chase, which has been converted into the the most luxurious retirement apartments imaginable, and pass their time investigating the cold case files their fellow resident, Penny (Susan Kirkby), a former detective, has somehow managed to hold onto.

But when money-grubbing landowner, Ian Ventham (David Tennant), reveals his plans to redevelop Coopers Chase, murder is no longer confined to the past. The privileged pensioners can barely conceal their glee at having something real to get their dentures into, much to the dismay of local police officers, Chris Hudson (Daniel Mays) and Donna de Freitas (Naomi Ackie).

Amidst the lightweight sleuthing, some serious issues are raised, including people-trafficking and dementia. But these are hopelessly out of place, treated so glibly that it feels very uncomfortable. There’s some real snobbery at play here too, presumably unconscious: the working-class-man-made-good with his loud voice and tacky McMansion; the upper-class oldies with their mellow tones and oh-so-tasteful decor.

I want to find nice things to say because it’s Helen Mirren, for God’s sake. But hers isn’t even the most wasted talent – at least she’s in a lot of scenes. The wonderful Ruth Sheen barely gets a look in as Aunt Maud. (What’s the purpose of this character? She adds nothing to the plot.)

To quote a catchphrase that’ll only mean something to Gen X, here’s my suggestion: Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead.

2 stars

Susan Singfield

Your Christmas or Mine?

08/12/22

Amazon Prime

Christmas movies are so hard to get right, especially when it comes to pleasing a committed Scrooge like me. Much of what passes for festive fare turns out to be inane, tinsel-adorned tat, often built around some available musical output. 2019’s Last Christmas springs immediately to mind. Pitched as a tribute to the late George Michael, it is a big dollop of vacuous candy floss. So I approach this film with some trepidation, noting that it barely registered at cinemas across the UK on its recent release – but a combination of ill-health and freezing weather conditions prompt me to take a gamble on it. I’m glad I do.

Your Christmas or Mine? (terrible title) is written by comedian Tom Parry and directed by Jim O’ Hanlon. James (Asa Butterfield) and Hayley (Cora Kirk) are young drama students in the throes of a heady romance. We first meet them at a busy railway station, where they are preparing to head off to their respective family homes to spend Christmas on different sides of the North/South divide. But, at the last moment, James experiences a sudden overpowering longing to spend more time with Hayley. He jumps off his train, changes platforms and scrambles aboard her service, seconds before it leaves the station.

Unfortunately, Hayley has had the very same idea…

After a sudden snowfall, the twosome find themselves marooned in unfamiliar locations and obliged to spend Christmas with their partner’s families. Once I’ve accepted this unlikely event, things rapidly get more interesting, as James and Hayley realise that neither of them has been entirely truthful. Why does James’ dad, Humphrey (Alex Jennings) hate Christmas so much? Why is Hayley’s dad (Daniel Mays) so obsessed with turduckens? And… who the hell is Hubert?

Parry’s culture-clash comedy sparkles with delightful dialogue, manic misunderstandings and riveting revelations, while the two central characters’ escapades are pitched just on the right side of believability. There’s a poignant explanation for Humphrey’s Scrooge-like persona that unexpectedly gives my tear ducts a bit of a workout; the two leads are immensely likeable, and there are cameos by excellent character actors (Mark Heap, Harriet Walter and David Bradley, to name but three.) Best of all, there are a couple of surprises I genuinely don’t see coming.

Your Christmas or Mine? is a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours and, after witnessing some real festive stinkers in recent years, that’s something to be thankful for. If asked for a Christmas movie recommendation this year, I’m happy to go with this.

Or Die Hard. It’s a tough call.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

The Dumb Waiter

07/07/21

Old Vic: In Camera

Some questions are no-brainers. Would I like to see The Old Vic’s production of The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter? Well, as I consider it to be among the finest one-act plays in history, the answer to that is a resounding yes.

Am I able to be part of the socially-distanced audience for one of its live performances? Well, no, that’s awkward. It’s a long way from Edinburgh to London – but luckily, for a small fee, I can choose to watch it online as it is transmitted live, so it’ll be the next best thing to actually being there.

And who are the chosen performers for this production? David Thewlis as Ben and Daniel Mays as Gus. When I think about it, I can’t come up with two more appropriate actors for those roles. Thewlis promises to be a perfect fit for the snappy, irritable Ben, while Mays, with his perpetual hangdog look, is just right for his hapless subordinate, Gus.

The tickets are duly booked and a reminder is popped into the diary. All good.

The Dumb Waiter first arrived on the London stage in 1960 and, in many ways, it’s the play that first cemented Harold Pinter’s reputation. It’s the tale of two hit-men, sequestered in a grubby room, waiting to kill whoever walks through the doorway. The room is pretty featureless apart from the titular dumb waiter, and the men’s rambling conversation is punctuated by a series of seemingly meaningless instructions that are delivered within it.

Of course this antiquated piece of machinery is a metaphor for something – and the beauty of the play is that a viewer’s interpretation of what it might actually represent can be wide-ranging and inventive. Across the years, I’ve seen this performed in various venues and, back in the dim and distant past, have even been part of a youth theatre production of it. The play has been a huge influence on so many other productions – Martin McDonagh’s wonderful film In Bruges, for instance, clearly owes it a considerable debt.

So, the play begins at the appointed time, and yes, Thewlis and Mays are every bit as good as anticipated. Perhaps it doesn’t help that I know the script so well I could probably be working as a prompt – so there was never any chance of surprising me here, since director Jeremy Herrin has opted to play it straight, sticking to the original staging. What’s missing, of course, is the subtle electricity that’s generated by being present at the actual event, the indefinable frisson of watching the play unfold right in front of my gaze without the inevitable distancing that ensues whenever a play is turned into a movie.

In short, I’m still longing to return to the theatre for real. Until that time, The Dumb Waiter is a fine way to pass an hour and I urge you to watch it while you still have the chance. You’ll find the link here: https://www.oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/2021/live-stream-from-home/old-vic-in-camera-the-dumb-waiter

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Swimming With Men

11/07/18

The Full Monty has so much to answer for. Since its initial success in 1997, there have been innumerable films about groups of men banding together in order to perform in front of audiences, and the makers of Swimming With Men are clearly hoping to find similar success. Here, the chosen skill is male synchronised swimming and, while there’s definitely the germ of a good idea at the heart of this endeavour, the resulting film never really manages to make its way out of the shallow end.

Eric Scott (Rob Brydon) is an accountant, currently going through a mid-life crisis. Thoroughly bored and disgusted with his day job, he somehow convinces himself that his wife, newly elected town councillor, Heather (Jane Horrocks), is having an affair with her boss. He promptly storms out of the family home to live in a nearby hotel and spends most of his spare time at the local swimming baths, working off his feelings of discontent. It’s here that he encounters a group of disaffected men who are learning synchronised swimming routines. They include handsome leader, Luke (Rupert Graves), former youth team footballer, Colin (Daniel Mays), and dodgy delinquent, Tom (Thomas Turgoose). Eric’s abilities with mathematics apparently make him an ideal addition to the collective and, pretty soon, with the help of swimming bath attendant, Susan (Charlotte Riley), they are training to enter the Male Synchronised Swimming World Championships. (If this strikes you as an unlikely occurrence, the film makers are keen to point out that a team from Sweden – who actually have small roles in the film – did exactly that a few years ago.)

But really, Swimming With Men fails to convince on so many levels, this is the least of the problems I have with it. There’s undoubtedly a timely message here about male bonding and the need for men to find a place where they can open up and talk about their unhappiness, but this film is a missed opportunity to fully explore the idea. Instead, the lazy, underdeveloped screenplay prefers to deal with simpler issues, but even then it doesn’t get them right, throwing up too many questions for comfort. Why is Brydon’s character so deluded? We are shown very little motivation for his destructive behaviour. And what really changes by the end?

There are also some less pressing  – but nonetheless niggling – issues. Why are several really excellent character actors given very little to do but splash around in budgie smugglers? And why is there no visible change over time in the physiques of men who are supposedly training hard for a World Championship?

Ultimately though, what really defeats the film is the fact that the sport of synchronised swimming, as performed by a group of amateurs, just doesn’t look very spectacular on the big screen. I find myself in total sympathy with the bunch of kids at a birthday party who are given a performance as a special treat and watch the resulting antics in bemused silence. (No wonder one of them feels the need to liven things up by putting a turd in the pool.) Indeed, it really says something when the film’s most memorable scene has the swimming team performing a spirited routine… on dry land.

This is a potentially interesting idea that fails to stay afloat and seems destined to sink without trace.

2.8 stars

Philip Caveney

The Limehouse Golem

11/09/17

This Ripper-esque murder mystery, adapted from the novel by Peter Ackroyd and written for the screen by Jane Goldman, has plenty of things to commend it, even if the story seems a little over-familiar. Bill Nighy (in a role originally intended for the late Alan Rickman) plays Inspector John Kildare, brought in by his superiors to investigate a series of grisly murders in the East End of London. Kildare, we quickly learn, has been passed over for promotion because he is a homosexual. The baffling nature of the crimes suggest he’s being offered as some kind of sacrificial lamb, somebody to take the inevitable hit when he fails to get a conviction.

Kildare is also drawn into the trial of former music hall star, Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke), who stands accused of poisoning her husband, John (Sam Reid). The problem is that the dead man is one of the chief suspects for the Golem murders. The others are famous music hall star, Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), George Gissing (Morgan Watkins) and Karl Marx (Henry Goodman): yes, that Karl Marx! Assisted by Constable George Flood (Daniel Mays), Kildare starts his investigation – and quickly discovers that he is wandering into a very tangled web indeed…

So yes, plenty to enjoy here – superlative performances from most of the cast (especially Booth), an intriguing look at the kind of entertainment laid on in the music halls of the period (I have to say, people must have been easily pleased in those days – it’s not exactly comedy gold) and some convincing recreations of Victorian London in all its grubby glory.  And yet, something doesn’t quite gel. The story unfolds slowly and fitfully, feeling longer than it’s one hour and forty nine minute running time. It only generates a full head of steam as it moves towards the final half hour or so. Nighy is always a pleasure to watch, but I couldn’t help feeling he wasn’t really given enough to do here, required mostly to stand around and look perplexed.

It would be criminal to give away the ending, so I won’t – but suffice to say, that I thought it was one of the stronger elements of the film. Rookie director Juan Carlos Medina may not have the lightness of touch needed to make this work perfectly, but it’s nonetheless a decent effort.

Be warned, though, the visceral murder scenes are not for the squeamish.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney