From Knives Out to The Thursday Murder Club, 'cosy crime' is having a revival

Forget true crime and Scandi noir – Ed Power ponders the phenomenon of ‘cosy crime’, as the wildly popular Knives Out movie series and the Thursday Murder Club hark back to the glory days of Agatha Christie and Cluedo

Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, the highly anticipated sequel to Knives Out.

Rian Johnson is set to make a killing this Christmas. The director’s second Knives Out movie, Glass Onion, has just arrived in cinemas ahead of its release on Netflix on December 23.

The film, starring Daniel Craig as sleuthing detective Benoit Blanc, is exclusive to the streaming platform, a privilege for which Netflix has paid dearly. It has stumped up $469m for the rights to Glass Onion and a future third in the series that began with the original, Knives Out, in 2019. No wonder Johnson is so keen on screams: Knives Out has made him wealthy beyond imagining.