Hot on the heels of Netflix’s Geek Girl comes another adaptation of a young-adult bestseller, this time from the BBC. Holly Jackson’s 2019 debut, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, has been translated to the small screen by Poppy Cogan and is directed by Dolly Wells, best known as an actor (Doll & Em, Dracula, Inside Man and most recently The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin).
As with Geek Girl, it has retained the book’s youthful energy and freshness and found a strikingly good actor to play the teenage lead. Emma Myers (who came to prominence as Wednesday Addams’ werewolf roommate in Netflix’s hit series about the eccentric family’s daughter) manages to bring all the nerdy naivety required for the part of 17-year-old Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Pip decides to investigate the suspected murder-suicide of two teenagers from her school as part of her extended exam project. This is such a perfect conceit – all the solipsism and idealism of adolescence compressed into one tiny moment – that I would like us to take a moment to admire it before we go on.
