A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is a new teen drama series based on the hugely successful mystery thrillers by Holly Jackson. The series follows Pip Fitz-Amobi who becomes determined to solve the murder of a local schoolgirl after growing convinced that the police had pinned the case on the wrong person. Here is everything that happened in episode 1...
The first episode opens with a teenage girl walking down a quiet street in the middle of the night. At first, she seems just to be making her way home, but it is only after a few minutes that we see her from behind and she has a gaping wound on the back of her head that is bleeding badly. We later find out this is Andie Bell, the teenager whose murder takes center stage in this mystery thriller.
In the present day, we see Pip walking home from school with her friends, they try their luck buying alcohol from the local shop, but as they live in a sleepy English village, everyone seems to know everybody and they soon get caught for trying to buy beer underage.
As the teenagers run away from the shop before the owner can catch them, Pip gets separated from her friends and walks past the memorial for Andie, the murdered schoolgirl who died five years before.
Pip chats with her brother and parents at home and agrees to take the family dog, Barney, for a walk. As she walks past another house in the village she sees some kids knocking on the door before running away. As she gets closer, she sees someone has spray painted 'scum family' on their wall. We then discover that Andie was killed but the police never found her body... however, the case was closed because her boyfriend at the time, Sal Singh, took his own life after confessing to the killing - and this was his house.
Despite having left school for the summer, Pip decides that she wants to do an extended project and comes up with the idea to do it about Andie's murder. She asks Ravi, Sal's brother (who also lives in the house with the graffiti on it) about what he remembers from that night, but despite Pip making him muffins as a peace offering, he doesn't take kindly to her digging up the past and slams the door in her face.
Later, Pip walks in the woods and all the trees are covered in black ribbons, presumably in memory of Andie. Then she finds an abandoned shed and inside is a mattress and some graffiti that looks like it was done by teenagers. But as Pip is looking around the hut, a runner goes past and her dog, Barney, chases after her. When Pip finally catches up with Barney she is spooked because the runner looks like Andie, and we discover she must be Andie's sister.
While Pip is hanging around with her friends who are all talking about boys and parties, she is still distracted by Andie's case. Her best friend Cara asks Pip not to grill her older sister, Naomi, about the night Andie was killed because although she was there, she doesn't like the past being dragged up.
However, when Pip goes to get snacks at Cara's house, she bumps into Naomi in the kitchen and she talks about the night Andie went missing, but they are interrupted when Cara and Naomi's dad comes home.
At home, Pip is making an evidence board in her bedroom, putting together all the clues she has about the night Andie was killed. After stalking Andie, Sal and Cara's sister Naomi on social media, she finds out they were also hanging out with a boy called Max Hastings on the night of the murder and Pip decides she needs to question him.
Pip offers to waitress at a party, knowing that it is being held at Max's house, but she also ropes in Cara, who isn't impressed because as part of the job they have to dress up as stars.
After watching Max all evening, Pip finally tracks him down in the cellar where she quizzes him about what happened the night Andie died and he admits that Sal left his house at around 10pm and that he has no idea where he went after that.
Pip is surprised when Max admits Sal asked them all to lie to the police and give him an alibi as that is the same time that Andie was killed.
Despite being a little worse for wear because Max would only answer her questions if she downed shots, Pip knows that Max and Naomi's version of events don't quite match up and when Cara finds out that she has been questioning her sister after she specifically asked her not to, they argue.
Later that day, Pip goes back to Ravi's house to apologize for asking about Sal, and he is bemused to see she is still dressed as a star. He accepts her apology and takes her to Sal's room where they find his mobile phone and they go through his messages.
As Ravi explains that his brother was really clever but used text slang in his messages, he points out the one at the end, which is a message from Sal to his dad apparently confessing to killing Andie, and has perfect grammar and punctuation so couldn't have been from Sal.
But if the message wasn't from him, who sent it?
Throughout the episode, we also see flashbacks from Pip's time at school five years previously where she sees Andie and Sal in the school corridor... Andie is alone and trying to run from something, but when she sees Pip she puts her finger to her lips in a silence gesture, hinting to a very young Pip that she doesn't want to be found.
However, when Sal arrives looking for her, Pip cracks and tells him that Andie went into a different classroom. It seems that because she keeps going back to this same scene numerous times in the epsiode it is playing on her mind. But why?
At the end of the episode, Pip is looking through Sal's phone and is happy that Ravi has said that he will help her prove that his brother is innocent.
But, as she looks through Sal's photos, we see a flashback to Sal and Andie arguing in a car in the woods. They seem to be disagreeing about something big, but when Sal gets out of the car Andie follows him and they kiss and make up. But what were they arguing about?
All episodes of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder are now available on BBC iPlayer in the UK and in the US the series will be released as a box set on Netflix on Thursday, August 1.
