A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (TV series)

*A Good Girl's Guide to Murder*
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
Genre	Mystery thriller
Created by	Poppy Cogan
Based on	A Good Girl's Guide to Murder; by Holly Jackson
Written by	Poppy Cogan; Ruby Thomas; Zia Ahmed; Ajoke Ibironke;
Directed by	Dolly Wells; Tom Vaughan;
Starring	Emma Myers; Zain Iqbal; Asha Banks; Raiko Gohara; Jude Morgan-Collie; Yali Topol Margalith; Yasmin Al-Khudhairi; Henry Ashton; Carla Woodcock; Mathew Baynton; Gary Beadle; Anna Maxwell Martin;
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	6
Production
Executive producers	Matthew Read; Matthew Bouch; Frith Tiplady; Holly Jackson; Poppy Cogan; Dolly Wells;
Producer	Florence Walker
Running time	40–48 minutes
Production companies	Moonage Pictures; ZDFneo;
Original release
Network	BBC Three
Release	1 July 2024 –; present

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is a British mystery thriller television series based on the 2019 novel of the same name by Holly Jackson, adapted by Poppy Cogan, directed by Dolly Wells, and developed by Moonage Pictures and the German public broadcaster ZDFneo for BBC Three. The series, consisting of six episodes, covers events from the first book, and it was released for streaming on 1 July 2024 on BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom, followed by its terrestrial premiere on BBC Three on 10 July. It was released internationally on Netflix on 1 August 2024.

In November 2024, it was renewed for a second series.

Premise

Pip Fitz-Amobi (Emma Myers) is not satisfied that the killing of a local school girl has been investigated sufficiently and takes matters into her own hands, producing her EPQ on the topic.^[2]

Cast and characters

Main

Emma Myers as Pippa "Pip" Fitz-Amobi
- Kitty Anderson as young Pip
Zain Iqbal as Ravi Singh
Asha Banks as Cara Ward
Raiko Gohara as Zach Chen
Jude Morgan-Collie as Connor Reynolds
Yali Topol Margalith as Lauren Gibson
Yasmin Al-Khudhairi as Naomi Ward
Henry Ashton as Max Hastings
Carla Woodcock as Becca Bell
Mathew Baynton as Elliot Ward
Gary Beadle as Victor Amobi, Pip's father
Anna Maxwell Martin as Leanne Amobi, Pip's mother

Recurring

India Lillie Davies as Andie Bell
Rahul Pattni as Sal Singh
Jackson Bews as Daniel Da Silva
Kamari Loyd as Josh Amobi
Matthew Chambers as Jason Bell
Annabel Mullion as Rosie Hastings
Adam Astill as Toby Hastings
Orla Hill as Ruby Foxcroft
Matthew Khan as Dylan
Oliver Wickham as Jesse Walker
Georgia Lock as Isla Jordan

Guest

Georgia Arron as Emma Hutton
Jessica Webber as Nat Da Silva
Thomas Gray as Howie Bowers
Ephraim O.P. Sampson as Jake Lawrence

Episodes

No.	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original release date
1	"Episode 1"	Dolly Wells	Poppy Cogan	1 July 2024 (2024-07-01)
Pippa 'Pip' Fitz-Amobi is entering her final year of school prior to attending university, and for the subject of her EPQ she decides to investigate the local 2019 disappearance of Andie Bell from five years earlier. A popular student, Andie was dating classmate Sal Singh when she disappeared, with police suspecting him of being responsible for her murder. Before he could be charged Sal allegedly confessed to killing Andie and then took his own life. Pip however believes that Sal was innocent and is determined to find out the truth. After initially being rebuffed by Sal's brother Ravi, she begins her investigation by interviewing Sal's friend Naomi Ward, the older sister of Pip's best friend Cara, whose father Elliot is an English teacher at their school. Naomi reveals that Sal had an alibi for the night of Andie's disappearance, though doesn't elaborate after their conversation is interrupted. Following an interview with Sal's friend Max Hastings, who claims Naomi is lying to protect Sal, she approaches Ravi again. After she tells him that she believes Sal is innocent, Ravi shows Pip Sal's phone, indicating that someone else appears to have sent the confession text from his phone due to the difference in grammar.
2	"Episode 2"	Dolly Wells	Poppy Cogan	1 July 2024 (2024-07-01)
Now working with Ravi, Pip turns her attention to Andie's two best friends, Emma Hutton and Nat Da Silva. Interviewing them, she finds out that Andie had a secret, second, older boyfriend. Taking a break from the investigation, Pip goes camping with her friends. During the trip she finds an anonymous warning left in her bed telling her to stop digging. Returning from the camping trip, Pip and Ravi deduce from Andie's social media photos that shortly before her disappearance, she and Nat had had a falling out, which they presume was related to nude photos of Nat having been leaked and suspect that Andie may have been responsible. Pip and Ravi confront Nat who denies hurting Andie and discloses that Andie was involved with Max. Pip goes back to interview Max, finding an intimate photo of Andie in his room, however he claims that he found it at school, that his relationship with Andie was not romantic, and that in fact Andie dealt drugs and he was one of her customers.
3	"Episode 3"	Dolly Wells	Ruby Thomas	1 July 2024 (2024-07-01)
Pip decides that she must track down the drug dealer Andie was dealing for. To do so she must find the location of a Calamity party, an infamous secret teen party supposedly full of drugs and sex. Later, attending the party with her friends Cara and Lauren, she manages to find the drug dealer, who reveals that Andie kept a secret burner phone along with a drug stash in a stuffed rabbit. Afterwards Pip narrowly escapes an unwanted sexual encounter with another partygoer whom she'd mislead during her undercover ruse. Back at home she receives a threatening text message that tells her to stop investigating. The next day an impromptu conversation with Andie's sister, Becca Bell, discourages her from continuing her investigation, but then deciding that she needs to find the rabbit and phone, Pip breaks into Andie and Becca's house with Ravi, where they are almost caught by Becca and Nat's brother, policeman Dan Da Silva.
4	"Episode 4"	Tom Vaughan	Zia Ahmed and Poppy Cogan	1 July 2024 (2024-07-01)
Going through the contents of the stuffed rabbit that they stole from Andie's house, Pip and Ravi find a list of Andie's customers written out in code. Pip later discovers that the list was written on a piece of paper from the Ivy House Hotel. Going there to investigate, Pip steals the guest list from 2019 and discovers that Andie stayed at the hotel when Pip recognises the floor from a selfie Andie had taken there. Pip determines that Andie stayed there with her secret older boyfriend under the pseudonyms of Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. Pip attempts to call the number associated with the booking but finds that it's disconnected. The next day Dan corners Pip on her way to school, revealing that he knows that it was her that broke into the Bell house. He discusses the difficult childhood he and his little sister Nat had had, how Andie and Becca's dad had supported them, and presses her to stop investigating, informing her that he'd worked on the case, he's certain that Sal was guilty, and shows her a video of Sal getting aggressive during a police interview. Unsure about what she saw in the video, Pip wonders whether Sal did in fact commit the murder. She remembers seeing Sal and Andie the day before Andie disappeared, with Sal asking Pip if she had seen Andie, when Andie wanted to be left alone. After a difficult discussion with Ravi, Pip returns to Cara's house where Naomi gives Pip access to her laptop, hinting at something she should look for, before leaving for the 2019 class reunion. On the laptop Pip finds a picture on Max Hastings's Instagram account proving Sal's alibi — he had in fact been with his friends until after midnight on the night of Andie's disappearance; although Sal was not featured in the photo, it must have been him holding the camera. Pip then goes to find Naomi to ask her why then she, Max, and Jake Lawrence had lied to the police saying that Sal had left their hangout to go find Andie at 10:30 that night.
5	"Episode 5"	Tom Vaughan	Poppy Cogan and Ajoke Ibironke	1 July 2024 (2024-07-01)
Finding Naomi at the 2019 class reunion party, Naomi reveals to Pip that five years earlier, she, Max, and Jake were involved in a drunk driving collision after a New Year's party. Max had been driving and had called someone to have it covered up. Naomi further reveals that months later, after Andie's disappearance and just after they'd been questioned about Sal, someone had blackmailed the three of them into lying to the police in order to implicate Sal. Max, joining the conversation is enraged, and points out that if she uses the picture to prove Sal's innocence then Naomi would get into serious trouble and she'd thus have harmed her best friend's family, putting Pip in a difficult position. She then discusses things with Cara and promises to try to find another way to prove Sal's innocence. Later that night Pip receives further threatening text messages. Attempting to goad the killer she publishes a video claiming that she has proof that Sal was innocent. However the next day during a family birthday party, Pip's dog Barney is killed, leaving her distraught. After burying him in the garden, Pip realises that it must have been Dan who Max had called after the 2019 accident. Pip then confronts Dan at the police station and he reluctantly admits to tampering with the crash scene. Explaining why, he reveals that two years before Andie went missing he'd had a relationship with her; she was 15 years old and he was aspiring to join the police; and that Max knew of this and had been blackmailing him. Thus Dan could not logically be the one who blackmailed Naomi, Max and Jake to falsely implicate Sal. The next day at school Pip gets a call from the number she'd found in the hotel guest book; When Pip answers, it turns out to be Naomi using her father Elliot's old phone. After getting picked up by Elliot for a movie night with Cara, Pip deliberately leaves her phone in the car so she can track it with her laptop. She then discovers that the message telling her to stop digging had been printed from Elliot's computer, and sees that Elliot has gone to the old Ward family home from which they'd moved years earlier. Worrying that Andie might be alive and being held prisoner there, she notifies Ravi and drives to the house where she confronts Elliot. He refutes her accusation that he killed Andie and confesses that during a difficult part of his life following the death of his wife Isobel, Andie, who had a difficult home life and had been struggling with school work, had come to him for help; that they had grown close and briefly had a romantic relationship, until she'd fallen in love with Sal. Elliot further reveals that shortly afterwards, in the days prior to going missing, Andie had arranged to meet up with him at the hotel; he'd hoped that she'd had a change of heart, but instead she'd asked for money, to which he'd said no. She'd then turned up at his house a few days later and tried to blackmail him for it; he'd again refused; she'd gone wild; and he'd ended up pushing her away from him, causing her to fall and hit her head on the counter. He'd then gone to get his phone to call an ambulance, but when he'd returned, she was gone. After finishing his story, Pips accepts that he hadn't killed her, but then hears a tapping coming from pipes. Dan tries to assure her it's nothing and encourages her to leave, but Pip races upstairs to investigate, discovering a woman locked in the attic bearing a resemblance to Andie. Elliot locks the door to the attic trapping Pip inside.
6	"Episode 6"	Tom Vaughan	Poppy Cogan	1 July 2024 (2024-07-01)
The young woman in the attic, Isla, tells Pip that she had been homeless when Elliot came across her, momentarily mistaking her for someone else, presumably Andie, relieved to find her still alive. Disappointed it wasn't who he though it was, he'd then offered to let her stay at his house for the night to help her. That evening she'd awoken and gone downstairs, finding him drinking. Prompted by her telling him he was a good person, he'd become emotional, confessing how he'd murdered Sal. After Isla then tried to run away, he'd stopped her and had kept her trapped in the house for the next five years. The police arrive, arrest Elliot and release Pip and Isla. With the case now solved, Pip tidies up her bedroom wall where she'd mapped out her investigation, and Ravi later tells her that he's leaving to start a new life elsewhere. A comment by her mother however prompts her to reconsider loose ends and she discovers proof that Elliot could not have been the one who abducted Barney. She goes and confronts him at the police station. Someone else must have been sending her those threatening messages, and that same someone must have murdered Andie. He shares that he believes Andie wanted money because she wanted to run away from her abusive father, Jason, and that he knew for a fact that Jason had not been at a party the whole night as claimed, since he'd seen him driving a blue van while he'd been out looking for Andie. He also reveals that after Andie had gone missing, Naomi had been acting differently, so he'd read her diary and thus learned about the hit and run, the knowledge of which gave him a means to escape his sticky situation and protect his family — killing Sal, and blackmailing Naomi and her friends to frame him. Pip locates the van seemingly hidden in Jason's recycling plant, narrowly avoiding getting caught by Jason, then learns from Jesse, an employee, that Jason had simply been called away from the dinner party that night to deal with an alarm that had been triggered at the recycling plant, as proven by CCTV, and that this had actually already been investigated. Jessie also reveals a different point of view to Jason's controlling behaviour — the fact that his girls were wild and possibly in need of such discipline. She also reveals that Andie's sister Becca, influenced by her sister's out of control behaviour, had snuck out to a 2019 Calamity party where she'd gotten drugged with Rohypnol and raped. Pip deduces that Max had bought Rohypnol from Andie and assumes that he must have deliberately lured Becca to the party so that he could rape her. She also deduces that it was actually Becca driving Andie's car that night, not Andie as had been assumed and goes to confront her. Becca tells Pip that Andie had dissuaded her from reporting the assault to the police because it had been her that had sold the drugs to Max, and had said that she'd done so because she needed money in order to run away from home. Becca, feeling hurt and abandoned, shoved Andie, who thus hit her head for a second time, fell to the floor, and died with Becca watching. Becca then takes Pip to where she hid Andie's body in an old septic tank, before revealing that she'd drugged Pip's tea with Rohypnol and intends to kill her too. Ravi and Cara arrive just in time with the police who apprehend Becca. A flashback reveals that on the day Andie went missing, her dad had discovered her plan to run away and had taken all of the money she'd saved, hence her desperation to extract money from Elliot, and that Sal had been looking for her so that he could support her plans. Pip bumps into Max and vows to ensure everyone he's hurt gets justice. Pip and Ravi finally confess feelings for each other.

Production

In September 2022, the project was announced as a BBC Three television adaptation of the Holly Jackson novel A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, produced by Moonage Pictures.^[3] Dolly Wells is set to direct the project from a script by Poppy Cogan, alongside Zia Ahmed, Ajoke Ibironke and Ruby Thomas. It is produced by Florence Walker, and executive producers include Matthew Read, Matthew Bouch and Frith Tiplady for Moonage Pictures, and Lucy Richer and Danielle Scott-Haughton for the BBC, along with Wells, Holly Jackson and Cogan.^[4]

Despite the executive producer Frith Tiplady stressing that the first series has a real end,^[5]^[6] it was renewed for a second series on 20 November 2024, which will cover events from the second book, Good Girl, Bad Blood. Jackson and Cogan will be returning for the screenplay, while Myers and Iqbal are set to reprise their roles.^[7]

Casting

In June 2023, production started with Emma Myers and Zain Iqbal cast into the lead roles of Pip and Ravi.^[8]^[9]

Filming

Filming took place around Bristol and Somerset. Locations include the Redcliffe Caves,^[10] the Avon Valley Railway car park,^[11] Redland,^[12] Redmaids' High School, Westbury-on-Trym,^[13]^[12] and Axbridge.^[14]^[12] Filming took place between July and September 2023.

Release

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder was released for streaming on 1 July 2024 on BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom^[14]^[15] and in Ireland,^[16] Stan in Australia,^[17] and ThreeNow in New Zealand.^[18] A terrestrial broadcast on BBC Three began on 10 July 2024,^[15] with two episodes being broadcast per week.^[19] The series was released in Germany on 30 August 2024 on the ZDFmediathek service, while ZDFneo will broadcast two episodes per week beginning from 8 September 2024.^[20] On 22 April 2024, Netflix announced that the series would be released on its platform on 1 August 2024.^[21]

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 39 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "A frothy series that carries off the classic murder mystery with a light touch, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder's checks all the boxes for a sweetly satisfying binge."^[22] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 69 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[23]