*Spoilers for the book and show ahead*
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is a popular book that went viral on Tik-Tok and has over a four-star rating on Goodreads. So, when the on-screen adaptation was announced, fans were ecstatic, but wondered whether the show would actually portray the book as everyone hoped it would.
This new TV show was originally released in the United Kingdom (UK) on July 1 on BBC. It was not available in the U.S. until August 1, where it can now be streamed on Netflix. The show was directed by Tom Vaughan and Dolly Wells and is based on the book of the same name by Holly Jackson. The genre of this book is young adult, thriller, and mystery. Lovers of the book were hoping for the show to be just as well-written.
Both the show and the book follow Pip FItz-Amobi, played by Emma Myers, who is a teenage girl that decides she wants to solve a small town murder for a school project. Six years prior, Andie Bell (India Lillie Davies) was allegedly killed by her boyfriend, Sal Singh (Rahul Pattni), who then killed himself out of guilt. This is what most everyone believes is true, except Pip. She continues to investigate the case, taking risks along the way, in order to find out what really happened.
This new show is fun to watch, but as a lover of the book, the changes they made from the original book series were disappointing.
Less Impressive Detective Skills
One thing that really stuck out while watching this show was the simplification of Pip’s investigation into the murder that made the show feel rushed. In the book, Pip had to do a lot of searching in order to find her suspects and clues. In the show, it seems like the directors made every step a little easier for her by having other characters just give her information. She no longer had to put in the effort to find her own clues.
An example of this is how she was able to find Andie Bell’s drug dealer, Howie Bowers (Thomas Gray). When she discovers Andie sold drugs, she convinces a boy at a party to show her where to find Andie’s dealer, and he just happened to be there at a party full of teenagers.
Meanwhile, in the book, she had to do this discovery all on her own. When she finds out from Max Hastings (Henry Ashton) that Andie Bell was selling drugs, she gets the dealer’s number by finding it on a boy’s phone at a party and searches for the dealer herself.
Although the TV show version seems a bit more realistic and much less dangerous, it is also unrealistic in its own ways. For instance, Bowers is not supposed to be the type of dealer that is out in the open. He is exclusive to only the few people who know about him. So, why would a drug dealer be at a party full of teenagers instead of keeping himself a secret?
Another example of Pip’s simplified investigation was how she found a photo proving Sal’s alibi. In the show, Naomi Ward (Yasmin Al-Khudari) simply tells Pip about Max Hasting’s fake facebook account. Compared to the TV show, Pip puts in a lot more work to find this information in the book. While she was looking at Naomi’s posts, she found that Max was often tagged as a different profile, Nancy Tangotits. She logs into Naomi’s facebook account with the help of Naomi’s sister, Cara (Asha Banks), in order to look through his private profile. She then has to interrogate Naomi and Max with the photo she found on his profile to get the confession out of them.
Pip’s thorough detective work was such an exciting part of the book to read, so it was disappointing not being able to experience that on screen.
What happened to Ravi’s Character?
Ravi Singh’s screen time, personality, funny quotes and overall character were not as present in the show as one would hope. Ravi is Pip’s partner on the case and the brother of one of the victims, Sal Singh. He is a major part of the story and definitely deserves more screen time than what he got in the TV show.
In the book, Ravi has a very funny personality, and this should have been better portrayed in the show than it was. One such example is the quote, “Real men wear floral when trespassing,” which was removed from the adaptation. This is one of the most quoted and popular lines in the book, so it does not make sense to me why they would take this out.
This quote represents the character’s innate sense of humor, even during risky situations like trespassing. Ravi is known throughout the series for always using humor to cope in tough situations.
Other people noticed the lack of Ravi’s lines as well. On some of the author’s posts on Instagram, fans were asking why his famous dialogue was removed. Holly Jackson responded, “I did everything I could to fight for those Ravi lines, believe me! I’m not the one to blame here.” and “Not my decision, I fought very hard to keep the series faithful, but ultimately I wasn’t the one writing it.” The creators missed out on writing the perfect TV adaptation when they decided not to involve the actual author of the book. One of the clear consequences is Ravi’s absent humor, which was a real let down.
Characters removed or merged with others
Multiple characters from the book were not even included in the TV show. These characters include Chloe Burch and Stanley Forbes.
Stanley Forbes is not a very important person in the first book, but he comes back in the second book as a major plot point. This choice removes any clues that may lead to the second season. It is not major that he is not involved in the first part of the trilogy, but now fans have to hope that he is included in the next season.
Similar to Stanley Forbes, Chloe Burch is not a major character. The interesting thing is they combined her with a more important character, Nat Da Silva (Jessica Webber). In the book, Chloe Burch is one of Andie Bell’s best friends, and Pip conducts an interview with her to get more information on the murder case. Nat Da Silva is a girl that Andie bullied in school, who repeatedly reappears throughout the book series, and it was known that Andie Bell shared Nat’s nude photos to the whole school. However, in the TV version, no one knows who shared the photos, and Nat was portrayed as Andie’s best friend. While she still has the cold personality described in the book, it is not aimed toward Andie specifically but rather to people in general.
Great things about the show
With all this criticism, there are still things that I enjoyed about the show. For one, the cast was great! They all portrayed the characters very well and made every emotion feel real. Even with the changes in some of the characters discussed earlier, it still felt like watching the same people I read about in the book.
To get the perfect portrayal of the novel’s characters, the only thing needed was some better writing. Including Jackson in that process would have made the representation of each character much better. But even so, every actor seemed to match their character very well.
An interesting addition to the show was a side story involving Pip’s father. When Pip and Ravi stole records from the inn that Andie stayed at, they discovered that Pip’s dad secretly stayed at the inn when he was supposed to have been in Nigeria with his mother. This caused Pip to believe that her father was having an affair and caused a lot of trust issues. This added more drama and interest to the story.
One more thing I liked was Daniel Da SIlva’s character, played by Jackson Bews, being more involved in the show. Dan has always been suspicious in the books, as many clues in Pip’s cases made him look guilty, and the show adds to that. It has all the same details from the books plus more.
He has an entire conversation with Pip where he acts strange about the things he shares, and this conversation includes some information that will be a great setup for a potential season three.
Overall, as someone who adored the book series, “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder”, it was exciting to watch, despite the many differences from the book that made it a bit disappointing.
