The Thursday Murder Club Filming Locations Are Almost Too Perfect

Netflix is about to get a lot more murder-y and a lot more cozy. Chris Columbus has turned Richard Osman's mega-selling novel The Thursday Murder Club into a glossy whodunnit with an absurdly stacked quartet of sleuths: Dame Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Pierce Brosnan. The setup is simple and delicious: four retirees who treat cold cases like a book club suddenly find a very fresh body on their own doorstep. Picturesque English village, crackling banter, bodies piling up — you get the idea.

Columbus wanted Cooper's Chase — the story's retirement village HQ — to feel less like a dreary care facility and more like the place you joke about retiring to at 55 and then quietly start Googling. He even looked back to his own UK shoots for inspiration and aimed for a kind of fantasy-campus grandeur.

"We wanted to create the Hogwarts version of a retirement community."

That aspirational approach shaped everything: light, landscaping, the proximity to a church and cemetery (which matters to the plot), and a visual plan that would let the camera roam without needing to fake the geography with CG.

So where did they shoot it?

Yes, Osman sets the books in Kent. No, they didn't shoot there. The production hopped around Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire, with Shepperton Studios handling the heavy lifting. Here's the quick tour:

• Fairhaven (the fictional town): Aldbury, Hertfordshire. All storybook cottages, zero notes.
• Cooper's Chase exteriors (and some interiors): Englefield House on the Englefield Estate, Berkshire. The place has a church and cemetery tucked just below the manor — exactly the layered layout the story needed — so they could shoot it as-is, no CG cheats.
• More Cooper's Chase interiors: Gaddesden Place, Hertfordshire. Plus, production dressed a bunch of rooms and corridors to become those elegant communal spaces you see on screen.
• The Jigsaw Room (where the gang plots): a substantial set build at Shepperton Studios.
• Le Pont Noir (the gastro-pub): The Red Lion in Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire. Classic British village pub energy, looks the part.
• The cemetery: a purpose-built set inspired by a corner of Highgate Cemetery in North London. It was convincing enough that some cast members thought it was the real deal — Henry Lloyd-Hughes apparently learned otherwise when he accidentally chipped a plaster gravestone.

Little insider bits for the location nerds

Englefield House might ring a bell: Crown fans have seen it doubling as Sandringham. Also, Steven Spielberg dropped by during filming — yes, actual Spielberg — alongside a very delighted Richard Osman. And if you&aposre wondering how Columbus found that unicorn layout with the manor and church on different levels so quickly, he says they spotted Englefield on day two of scouting. Sometimes you roll a natural 20.

Where to watch

The Thursday Murder Club is in select cinemas now and streams on Netflix from Thursday 28 August 2025.