“Then, on the next floor, for Joyce and Ibrahim, the ceilings are slightly lower, the windows are slightly smaller. Ibrahim has a sort of Gentleman’s Club room: it’s very serious, half-panelled, he has a parquet floor, dark walls, a leather Chesterfield. Joyce’s is more Laura Ashley-esque and floral—we referred to her set as the Lemon Drizzle Cake, as she keeps baking bigger and bigger cakes.”
Finally, up in the loft, we get to Ron. “His is the lad’s attic,” says Merifield, “with the punchball and the flatscreen TV and the beer pump in the kitchen.”
Where is the village in The Thursday Murder Club?
As well as following them in and around Coopers Chase, we see Elizabeth and Joyce venture out on the bus to visit the police station in the nearby village. For this, the production filmed in the village of Aldbury in Hertfordshire. “It’s quintessentially English,” says Merifield, “duckpond, beautiful Elizabethan country cottages with roses round the doors and so on. And next to the pond is a village hall, which is where we put the police station. The outside was the location and the inside we built on a stage, keeping the big lights as if they’re left over from when it was a village hall and a retro interior where their intrays are all stacked high because they’re too busy playing darts and the most they ever do is solve a crime about a lost kitten.”
Hertfordshire
As well as Aldbury, the production also found the home of Ian Ventham in Hertfordshire, using a striking modern build that contrasts heavily with the stately figure of Coopers Chase. “What we were after there was something completely alien to the rest of the film,” says Merifield. “It had to be stark and uninviting, the idea being that Ventham’s one of the baddies. It was a reference that came from Chris Columbus, who lives in LA: we had to find something that could have been in Hollywood.”
Buckinghamshire
The production drew on another of the Home Counties for two more of the film’s locations. One is the home of Tony Curran, co-owner of Coopers Chase. “That’s in Beaconsfield,” says Merifield. “We wanted something high-end Wimpy Home, faux-Georgian because you can see he’s a lad but he’s made good.” The other is the Red Lion in Little Missenden, which is where we see Ian Ventham meeting his associate Bogdan – a village pub which can boast four separate appearances in Midsomer Murders. We can expect it to be boasting about its role in another cosy-crime classic from here on.
